


Symbiosis

by Ookomix



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, F/M, Graphic Violence, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Kylo Ren Redemption, M/M, Parasites, redemption through slaughter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2020-01-12 08:18:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 47,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18442649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ookomix/pseuds/Ookomix
Summary: When sent on a mission to find a powerful Jedi artifact buried on a lost planet for centuries, Kylo Ren finds more than he hoped for; a dangerous way out of the First Order.The crossover Star Wars/Venom you never needed, but here it is!





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing. I thought about this one while leaving the theater after having seen Venom, and I worked on it for a long time. I think it's time to share it with the world, I don't care if no one's prepared for it! ahahahahah!  
> Fair warning: It's pretty graphic. I'm not joking. If you don't like blood, gore, violence and shit like this don't keep on reading.  
> For the rest of you: Enjoy!

The rain is pouring endlessly on the soaked swamp, in this undisturbed planet of the unknown regions. For the last thousand years, only a few ships have stopped in this dense, wet greenery, most of them frail cargos of valiant adventurers.

This one isn’t one of them.

Kylo Ren steps outside of his shuttle and stops inches before the wet dirt, a sneer of sheer disgust hidden behind his helmet. He turns toward the troopers accompanying him and commands with a sharp tone.

“Search the swamp. Find the targeted area.”

The troopers salute then jog past him to search the greenery, their white armors quickly splashed with mud and sticking leaves. Eventually Kylo goes after them, after a quick check through the Force. There’s… nothing unusual on this planet. No temple, no disharmony in the Force, no… special feeling at all. It’s just a damp, old, empty planet, and Kylo is surprised the Jedi would even choose this place to hold something said to be powerful. Not that Kylo is doubtful of his Master’s words. If there’s something to find there, he will find it. Kylo joins the search for what has been described as a cave entrance.

“Sir, we found something,” a trooper announces through the radio, and Kylo stops the staring contest he was having against an indigenous cat-like life form. Finally, something to kill the boredom. Kylo follows his soldiers’ location and finds them in front of the cave entrance. A shudder runs up his spine; the place is absent from the Force.

“Sir,” a soldier asks, oblivious of Kylo’s discomfort, “should we search inside?”

“… Yes. Be on your guards. And  _ don’t  _ touch anything.”

Once again, they salute, but this time they patiently stay behind as Kylo leads the way.

The place is empty of life. Most of all, it’s empty of  _ Force _ , as if something has annihilated every atom of life around. It makes the search almost impossible as Kylo can’t count on his abilities to try and find what the Jedi had hidden there. Annoyed to have to ask such a thing, Kylo brutally commands a trooper to light the way. As surprised as Kylo himself by the request, the trooper eventually obeys and gets his flashlight out. The walls are empty of signs or marks, it’s plain walls in a plain cave.

“What happened here?” Kylo says aloud, more a vocalization of his thoughts than a question. No trooper dares try an answer.

Grabbing the flashlight from his soldier’s hands, Kylo resumes the exploration alone, ordering for the troopers to stay back and watch for any sign of danger. More a polite way to have them out of his back than a real order. He then goes further into the darkness, the mechanical light his only way to see his environment without having to try. For the first time in his life, he feels completely and utterly  _ alone _ , without any other echo from the Force around him than his own. Even alone in a ship lost in space it never happened. Now drawn to the end of the cave by curiosity, Kylo explores every inch of the dark place. And eventually he finds something.

Hidden in a hole is a little metallic box, nothing fancy or dangerous looking. It’s a simple sealed box, tight shut by a layer of durasteel around the lid. Disappointed, Kylo takes the box and starts the way back to the cave entrance. Suddenly the box moves in his hands, and Kylo stops with a start. He looks at it, but it’s now completely still again. But Kylo knows he didn’t dream. There’s something  _ moving inside _ . It’s sort of terrifying, but at the same time tempting to open the lid, just to make sure of what he’s bringing back to the Star Destroyer. After all, he can’t risk the crew’s life by bringing back something hazardous, right?

Kylo puts the box on the ground and crouches near it. He carefully turns the box in his hands to look for a lock or a mean to open it without breaking it. When he makes the box levitate to free his hands and look with the flashlight, it once again starts moving, trembling with more and more intensity. Trying to ignore the feeling of unease, Kylo resumes his search for an opening, and eventually he finds one. He turns the lid and looks at the box shifting, unsealing itself with a hiss as the pressure drops inside the container. Nothing moves as he slowly opens the box, at first just a little, then Kylo completely removes the lid. The inside of the box is  _ black _ . Not empty, no, but some sort of black goo, motionless but at the same time… breathing isn’t the exact word.

“What is that?” Kylo asks aloud but with a soft voice, barely a breath leaving his mask.

Suddenly, as Kylo takes the lid again to close the box the thing starts moving so fast it catches him by surprise, and it throws itself at his mask with such violence Kylo’s head jerks backward with a painful  _ crack _ . He stumbles, dropping the box, and he uses both his hands to try and unstick the thing from his mask. Kylo can’t breathe. Whatever that is, that’s slowly but surely suffocating him through the mask. As an unthinking and desperate attempt to get oxygen back, Kylo unclasps his mask and throws it away as far as he can. The effect is the total opposite. Jumping from his mask, the black thing sticks  _ directly to his face _ , his place in the Force so empty Kylo can’t even hope to reach it and defend himself with the Force. Unable to scream, Kylo falls on his knees and uses the Force to hold as long as he can without oxygen.

And eventually it passes on its own. Air fills Kylo’s lungs as fast as it left, and he breathes deeply, trying to even his heart rate.

There’s no sign of the thing around. It has completely disappeared. Somewhat Kylo knows it’s not a good thing. When he gets up, he feels dizzy, but he fights it as best as he can and follows the way to the cave entrance. He takes his mask back on the way, but he puts it on his face only before facing the troopers. They’re waiting patiently, their weapons at rest as they surveil the surroundings of the cave. They turn to him like one man when they hear him get closer and salute him again.

“Sir? What did you find?”

“... Nothing,” Kylo answers without a second thought. “It was a waste of time. Prepare the ship, we’re leaving this planet.”

“Yes, sir!”

Kylo lets them go to the ship and looks at the cave one last time before leaving this blasted place for good.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo brings back a surprise on the Supremacy!

It has been a long time since Kylo fell sick while in hyperspace. He was four years old, accompanying his father from Chandrila to Coruscant in the Millennium Falcon, and he remembers he was so sick at that time he thought he was dying, because no one around him was sick.

This time’s no different, except he can’t show the troopers the gravity of his state. He lets them pilot and engage the hyperspace, then he retreats further back in the shuttle while growling at his soldiers not to disturb him… He stays sick the whole trip in hyperspace. When they arrive at the Supremacy and leave the starry tunnel of light, finally he feels better, and deduces it’s probably his encounter in the cave that has weakened him. He feels itchy and sick. All Kylo wants to do is go to his quarters and sleep, but he has a report to make.

Kylo enters Snoke’s throne room in silence and kneels far from his Master, aware his mission is a failure. He is sick  _ and  _ empty-handed. He prefers Snoke to know only of the latter.

“Tell me, my boy,” Snoke says with his usual paternalistic voice, “What did you find?”

“Nothing,” Kylo feels once again compelled to answer. A headache is settling under his temples. “I am sorry, Master, the mission… didn’t go as planned. The cave was empty.”

“Empty?”

Though his voice is still one of a patient man, the Force grows stronger in the throne room. Like some sort of signal, suddenly Kylo feels sicker and in pain, and the feeling  _ literally  _ crawls under his skin. He has to get out of this room.

“... Yes,” his voice breaks under the mask and he curses himself for that. He tries to compose himself, to ignore the atrocious sickness spreading in his body. “Yes. But I will fix this. If it wasn’t the right planet it was the right system. I-”

“Maybe there’s something you want to share with me, Kylo Ren?”

The question takes Kylo aback. Sharing is the last thing he wants, especially concerning  _ health issues _ . But… It’s the first time Snoke asks. Normally he  _ knows _ .

“No, Master. But I thank you for your concern.” He keeps as polite and neutral as he can.

Snoke stays silent for a few minutes, and Kylo doesn’t know if he can leave or excuse himself or if he has to wait. So he waits. And each minute passing is torture.

“We will discuss this later, you can leave.”

The sudden order is as surprising as welcome, and Kylo doesn’t even ask if Snoke needs anything else before getting up, bowing and leaving. It takes all his self-control not to run. The feeling under his skin hasn’t passed and, Ugh, he is hungry _and_ sick at the same time. Deciding against going to the Knights of Ren - and his own room in the officers’ quarters - Kylo goes to the other side of the ship and takes an empty room for himself. He locks the door and throws his helmet on the ground, just in time to empty his stomach in a corner. There’s blood in the bile.

“Fuck.”

“ **Don’t throw up.** **_We_ ** **need food.** ”

Kylo gasps and looks around, this simple gesture increasing his headache. His hair is stuck on his forehead with sweat and his cheeks are burning with fever.

“Who’s there?!” He feels stupid, asking this aloud in a room where he knows he’s alone.

The crawling under his skin suddenly increases, and Kylo yells in pain and horror. He takes off his cape and mantel as to get rid of the invisible bugs running on his body, but nothing changes, and he curls up in a ball and calls to the Force to try and protect himself from the agony, pain blooming everywhere in his insides.

“ **Food. We need food.** ”

“Oh Force you’re inside!” Kylo realizes way too late. “Get out! Get  _ out _ !”

The voice doesn’t answer but nothing changes either, and Kylo knows he has lost this battle. Even with all his willpower he can’t stop the crawling and the pain. He takes his clothes and helmet back and stumbles out of the room. He  _ has  _ to eat, it’s a matter of life or death.

Kylo wanders in the hallways of the Supremacy, keeping little composure he can gather as not to alarm the soldiers, engineers and officers he meets on his way. The voice is present, sticking around his brain and echoing in his ears and he can’t concentrate on anything else anymore.  **Eat him. Eat them. We need food.** Kylo keeps his pulsion under control. He’s not going to eat an officer. The idea’s crazy in itself. Everything’s crazy. But he’s so hungry… He enters the storage area where the food is stocked and passes near the man in charge of the stock without glancing at him. Though he says nothing, Kylo knows the man is both surprised, annoyed and afraid by the intrusion in an area that’s not supposed to be open to public. Kylo goes deeper into the room, looking for the shelves keeping the lyophilized food. He finds them and rips open one of the metallic boxes, letting the change of temperature cool his surroundings. He takes his helmet off and grabs the food  **food!** he barely opens before eating. He doesn’t even know what he’s putting in his mouth but it’s too late for this question. In the container it’s written it’s some kind of dried meat kept in salt.

The taste is disgusting. More than that, it’s inedible. He only has time to swallow one bite before his stomach rebels against the intrusion and Kylo throws up again, the stock officer shouting in surprise not far from him.

“What–?!”

Kylo raises his eyes to look at him with a puzzled expression. The fever is making everything foggy.

“That…” Kylo starts.

**That’s dead, we don’t eat dead things!**

“... Dead,” Kylo finishes. “That’s a dead… thing.”

He then puts the half-eaten portion in the officer’s hand and pushes him out of the way to leave the storage room, his helmet forgotten on the ground.

His hood put on his face to hide his features  _ and  _ his state, Kylo follows the Force to find something to eat that wouldn’t end up on the ground. He knows he’s making mistakes over mistakes. This one will probably cost him his head. But the hunger is too strong, and the fever, too present. It’s survival, nothing more.

He stays in the least crowded areas, takes the shortcuts to avoid everyone. There has to be something _edible_ in this ship. There has to. Lost in the ship, in the back areas where he usually never goes, Kylo hears the barks of the dogs **Dogs! Alive! Food!** they’re keeping for scouting the densest planets where scanners aren’t that efficient to discern all the life forms. So that’s where they’re keeping them. Kylo goes right to the sound, and he looks at the pen where the six dogs of the First Order are. They are ugly, Kylo always found the dogs ugly, he is more of a Tooka-person. But right at this moment there’s nothing more beautiful than this pale, scaly thing, full of teeth and atrophied tentacles. The dog handler comes to him and talks to him but Kylo can’t hear anything. He pushes the man out of the way and opens the pen, and all the dogs start barking with a raspy voice turning to high-pitched whines of fear. As they all retreat at the very end of the pen, Kylo enters and calls one of the beasts to him with the Force. Despite the massive size of the dog, it’s easy for him to restrain it. The dog tries to escape but to no use. Kylo plants his teeth in the leather of the beast’s neck, where it’s most tender, and when blood and flesh fill his mouth, it’s the purest feeling in the galaxy.

“ **_We_ ** **are going to be invincible.** ”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo's actions has consequences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay let's go! ahahahahahah!

Standing in the middle of the throne room, Kylo faces his master’s wrath with as much composure as he can gather without his mask to protect him. Behind him, motionless, are the Knights of Ren, silent and packed near the door like onions.

Though Snoke is still seated on his throne he looks like he’s ready to jump at Kylo’s throat.

“What happened?” he asks. He doesn’t scream but anger drips from his words.

To be fair, Kylo doesn’t exactly know what happened. He remembers the voice, the fear, the  _ hunger _ and the taste of the beast’s flesh on his tongue. And at this moment, exactly eight hours after the… incident, Kylo is still horrified and disgusted. The rest? It’s fog.

“What happened?” Snoke repeats, this time louder.

“I… don’t know, master. I lost my mind for a moment. I truly am sorry.”

**No you’re not!** Kylo flinches, but barely. He can’t show anything to his master.

“You lost your mind? Careless child, do you realize the consequences of this madness? We had to let good elements go to protect your reputation, the reputation of the entire Order!” His voice is now raising. “The cold war against the New Republic won’t last long, but as long as it does, we must remain flawless!” He leans back against his throne with a sigh and stares at Kylo for a few seconds. “So I am asking you one more time.” His voice is paternalistic again, almost caressing, and Kylo knows it’s never a good sign. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Kylo dares again.

Snoke doesn’t seem very pleased with the answer. He inhales deeply, then looks behind Kylo and directly to the Knights of Ren.

“Leave us,” he commands.

As always, the knights wait a sign from Kylo to move, not answering directly to Snoke. It takes Kylo all his willpower to dismiss them and face Snoke alone. He turns to them and nods, and the knights bow before leaving the room, the door closing behind them.

“You trained them well,” Snoke remarks with a pleased tone. Kylo knows his master isn’t  _ actually  _ pleased by the idea of the Knights of Ren not obeying him directly. “If only you were the same.”

“I’m sorry,” Kylo repeats. The voice is right. He’s not sorry. But he’s definitely afraid.

**Do not give him the satisfaction** . Kylo steadies his breath and stays composed. He’s not completely sick anymore, but the crawling is still there.

“Something has changed in the Force. I am sure you felt it too.”

What is he supposed to answer to that? “Yes, master.”

“It happened after your mission, the so-called…  _ failure _ .” Snoke thinks for a moment, looking right at Kylo who tries his best not to lower his head. “Kylo Ren, you are and will always be my best element, the student I am the proudest of. I can forgive a lot of deeds and choices from your part. But I  _ won’t _ tolerate if you hide from me.”

“I understand. I am sorry if I made you think that way. It won’t happen again. Again, I don’t know what happened, everything is a haze in my mind. I don’t remember much. Maybe I…”  **Don’t you DARE!** “fell sick on this planet, maybe a trap placed by the Jedi that triggered on our arrival. It’ll pass, it’s already passing.”

Snoke looks at him still, and he’s unreadable. It’s unsettling. Normally he knows what Kylo is thinking, always. Kylo has been afraid to  _ think  _ because though he fully supports the First Order there still is doubt in his mind, a light he can’t smother. He’s afraid Snoke finds out and thinks he’s a traitor to their cause. Today’s worse, because he can’t even control his train of thoughts. Yet… Yet Snoke seems not to understand the problem.

“You ate one of our hounds.”

“I’m sorry.” This time he is.

“Try for this not to happen  _ ever again _ .”

“Yes. Thank you.” And Kylo bows when he’s dismissed, and he leaves the throne room.

He’s not out of danger, but he bought time. Kylo goes to his chambers and looks for his knights. They answer straight away. Kylo looks at two of them, the oldest of his students, they already were the oldest of Luke’s. The two men, Sando and Keran wait for the orders.

“I want to know every Jedi weaponry, every artifact they found for the last three thousand years. I don’t care how long it takes you to find that. Do  _ not  _ fail me.”

**You don’t need this. I can answer each and every of your questions** **.**

“Wait,” Kylo says to his knights as they bow.

“... Yes?” One of them replies with an unsure tone.

“I don’t…”  **I have everything you need** “I…” Kylo rubs his temples. “You know what? Forget it.”

“Are you alright, master?” Kali, the young Nautolan girl asks him. She looks young and careful, but she has a taste for violence. Her loyalty to him is unfaltering. 

“I… No.” He stays silent for a moment, feeling his knights’ stare on him. “I’m not alright.”

Before they can ask anything else, Kylo dismisses them and goes to hide in his chambers.

**You shouldn’t have told that. They will doubt you now. They will think you are weak. You are weak. But** **_I_ ** **am strong, so** **_we_ ** **are strong.**

“Stop talking,” Kylo threatens, but it sounds more desperate than Kylo hoped.

**You can’t make me** .

“I will! I will find a way to make you shut up! You - You don’t have the right to inhabit  _ my body _ ! You made me lose my mind, eat a kriffin’ dog, embarrassed me in front of my knights and put my place in this Order  _ and my life  _ in danger, and yet you cowardly hide in front of my Master!”

A vexed hiss echoes in Kylo’s mind and he frowns. Is he losing his mind? Quickly, he goes to the bathroom and looks at the mirror to see himself. He’s paler than usual, and he looks sick, but at least he doesn’t look like he’s dying. Which is an improvement.

“... Maybe there was poison in the box and I’m just becoming crazy… Maybe it’s just the after-effect of the poison.”

As he’s about to leave the bathroom his reflection changes, his face is suddenly dripping black goo everywhere on his shoulders as his features disappear into nothing but a disgusting void of trembling and twitching pulp. A mouth as large as this face opens on sharp, white teeth.

“ **Do you really think so?** ”

Kylo’s eyes widen at the sight in front of him, and he touches his face with his hand to see if this is really happening. But all he touches is human flesh. His reflection brings sharp claws to its own face.

“You’re not real.”

“ **Oh, I’m not?** ”

The hand Kylo has brought to his face suddenly changes and covers itself with the exact same black thing, transforming his fingers into claws, and Kylo jumps back with a scream of surprise, trying to get the goo out of his hand. He stumbles back and falls on his backside.

**I am as real as you are. Now that I’m here, I’m even more real** . The thing in his head laughs as Kylo desperately tries to get rid of the thing on his skin.

Out of ideas, Kylo calls for his lightsaber and cuts his own hand off. The thing falls on the ground and starts melting with a disgusting sound, but there’s no trace of flesh under it. Kylo looks at the thing in horror. He doesn’t even feel the burn of the lightsaber on the rest of his wrist… When he looks at the stump, the black thing is already recreating a hand. His human hand.

Kylo gets up, makes a few steps into the bathroom again, and he throws up. Again.

**Now that was a stupid move!**

“What have you done to me?!”

**I made you a new hand! Be thankful!** The thing is speaking way too loud in his head, Kylo now  _ knows  _ he’s not hallucinating. But he’d rather be crazy.

Seated on the ground against the toilets, Kylo curls in a ball and tries to even his breath. It’s… It’s a kind of parasite  **I’m not** he caught when opening the box. The crawly feeling under his skin, the sickness, the  _ dog _ , it’s… It’s not only in his brain, it took hold of his entire body.

**Finally you understand** . Coming out of Kylo’s shoulder, an intricate but still disgusting thread of black organic filament weaves to create what looks like a face, constantly moving, a mask without eyes and too many teeth. Kylo leans his head against the toilets to stay as far away as possible from the nightmarish sight. The thing smiles widely, it’s worse.

“ **I know everything about you, and I didn’t introduce myself, how rude!** ” it laughs again. “ **I am the new chief leader of this mortal body. Consider yourself as my vessel and you will live to see the galaxy change** .”

“... No.” Kylo simply says.

The thing actually looks taken aback. It leans a little further from Kylo’s head, its smile gone. “ **Excuse me?** ”

Without another word, Kylo grabs the floating head and rips it off of his shoulder. The pain is excruciating, but he doesn’t stop. The last thread gives up. When Kylo wants to throw it away it simply melts to disappear in his hand, so Kylo gets up, wobbles a little, and screams.

“I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU ARE! I DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE A GOD! This is MY BODY! I will never give up!! I WILL GET YOU OUT AND I WILL HAVE MY LIFE BACK! And if I don’t, I will  _ die  _ trying to get rid of you!”

The voice is silent. Finally. Peace. The crawls are still there, the hunger, an ever-present feeling in the back of his mind. But the voice has stopped, and his body looks human. Kylo breathes again. He slowly goes to his bed, sits on it, then lets himself fall on his back to look at the ceiling. Five minutes after that, the nightmare starts again.

**Wow, you’re stronger than you look!**

“Oh. Force.” The thing is not even trying to look intimidating now. It’s just… annoying.

**Okay, okay, I tell you what, since you don’t actually have a choice in this matter, I will stay here and stick around for as long as I live, which is… pretty long. You will still be my vessel, because you have no way to get rid of me, let’s face it. I’m in your head, I know your thoughts.**

“Shut UUUP!”

**BUT if you stop trying to reject me, because it tires your body faster and then kills you faster or forces you to eat more and more to stay alive, which I WILL force you to do to survive, I will help you. Let’s make a deal** .

“I am NOT interested. I’m going to call my knights back and ask them to find a way to get rid of you!”

**Ahah, you’re funny! Anyway, if you accept your fate as my vessel… I will make you stronger than your master. Way stronger than Vader.**

Kylo gets into a sitting position on his bed and glances at his most prized artifact, Darth Vader’s helmet. “Don’t blaspheme.”

**Give it a rest, the guy’s dead. Dead people stay dead.** **Not good to eat. Not interesting.** It stays silent only a few seconds. **Do we have a deal?**

“I thought you could read my mind.” Kylo sighs. He rubs his face, looks at his hands one more time, as if he was expecting black goo on it. Or claws.

**Think about it** , it says in his head. Kylo gets up and goes to the bathroom again, faces the mirror again. The thing is still there. Looking at him with its eyeless face. It opens its mouth with a terrible smile.

“ **What happened back there, with your master?** ”

“... He couldn’t sense you. You were… invisible to him.”

“ **Yes. So?** ”

“He couldn’t…” Realization hits Kylo hard. “He couldn’t sense me. My mind was invisible to him.”

“ **You’re brighter than you look! Do we have a deal?** ”

Kylo gives up, a little too quickly for his own taste. “What do you want?”

The thing opens its mouth wide, and between the too numerous sets of sharp teeth it unfolds a gigantic and blood-red tongue.

“ **I want to destroy the universe** .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> meet our lovely new main character


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben discovers a little more about his new host, and every time it drives him a little further into catastrophes.

Kylo hasn’t slept in days. Not since before he left the Supremacy to go to this swamp where he met a fate worse than death. Though the voice, the _thing_ , is silent since Kylo accepted its deal the day before, the crawling under his skin is still there, and it’s driving him crazy. Snoke hasn’t called him back, yet, and Kylo sent his knights in mission for the First Order so he couldn’t be tempted to send them out there to find a way to get rid of the thing. Maybe the missions weren’t _his_ idea. He doesn’t know anymore.

He’s still hungry. He ate a whole dog not so long ago, and he’s still hungry.

Life isn’t good, life isn’t fair.

**Hungry** , the voice says in his head, melting with his thoughts.

“No,” Kylo replies, happy he’s alone in the Knights of Ren’s quarters so he can talk aloud without consequences. “You ate a  _ dog  _ the day before and it was a disaster. You better stay scarce for a while or we’re both dead.”  **Hungry** . “Isn’t an entire dog enough??”

The voice stays silent. Kylo groans and tries to concentrate on catching up with all the reports he missed, all the news in the First Order. It’s difficult to stay concentrated. Kylo sighs and asks, “... Why are you always hungry?”

**Oh so you want to talk to me, now?** Kylo tries not to be too frustrated. “It’s important for me to know.”  **Because the dog is not enough. Flesh is good, eyes, liver, brain, snacks** . “Ew.”  **But the hunger never stops. Wolves are always hungry, so they hunt so they eat but they’re hungry, so they hunt. We will hunt.** “Hunt what?”

Before the thing can answer, Kylo’s commlink blinks and Kylo shushes the creature to concentrate fully on his new task. The thing hisses again in anger, but Kylo is used to that, now. It seems it has less control over his mind than the first time, and Kylo intends on taking advantage of that. He looks at his screen pad.

“Snoke wants to see me.”  **Don’t go!** “Are you stupid? I’m going.”

And Kylo takes his helmet and lightsaber and gets ready to meet his master. He walks in the Supremacy in silence until he arrives to the throne room. Snoke is waiting for him, standing up and pacing slowly near the large windows of the room. The universe around the ship is glorious, there are planets really far away, almost invisible between the bright stars.

“You asked to see me?” Kylo says with a bow.

“Yes. I heard you sent your knights on a mission.”

“... Several, in fact. Three separate ways. Mostly scouting missions to find traces of Skywalker, and at least a few other Jedi artifacts if the first one doesn’t succeed.”

“I see.” Snoke stops his pacing and turns away from the window to face Kylo directly. “I too have a mission for you.” He goes to his throne in silence, slowly, and doesn’t talk until he’s settled. After he’s comfortable, he resumes. “Your… sickness disaster has broken the harmony of this ship, even if slightly. So I’m sending you to another ship, one where you will be closer to the action… and maybe you will learn how to behave in an army.”

“... I understand.”  **We don’t! We won’t! This place is perfect spot, this place, we can’t leave!** “How long?”

“Until you find Skywalker.”

**That’s long. He’s sending you away for good. The dog was good, though.** Kylo grimaces behind his helmet, annoyed by the idea  _ and  _ the voice.

“Very well. I won’t fail you.”

“I know you won’t, my apprentice. You will go to the Finalizer, and work with General Armitage Hux in the front lines. He’s… weak of mind, but a great strategist and a better engineer. He will be useful so  _ don’t kill him _ .”

**If he’s annoying, we will eat him** _. _ “Yes, Master,” Kylo simply replies.  **Stop being so compliant!** “What about my knights?”

“They will stay here, and work as they did, nothing changes for them.” Snoke says with a comforting tone.

But Kylo knows what he means.

That means Snoke is sending away the master to keep the dogs for himself. While he’s away, the Knights of Ren will have no choice but to obey Snoke. And Kylo won’t have the possibility to keep an eye on his personal guard.

“... I will prepare for the travel.”

“You do that. General Hux will be warned of your arrival. You will leave with a shuttle and forty TIE-fighters to increase the ranks of the Finalizer.”

Kylo bows and excuses himself to prepare for the trip.

Once again, the travel in hyperspace is not good for Kylo’s heart, and he stays quiet and sick the whole trip, until they eventually stop in his old galaxy. They’re still in the unknown region, near the Csilla system. Not far from everything, yet hidden from the New Republic. His master had talked about a planet sacred for the Jedi in these regions… But Kylo can’t remember. He’s happy the trip in hyperspace, which lasted no less than five days, is over. He’s once again really,  _ really  _ hungry.

“Is this going to be like this at every jump?” He snarls between his teeth as he tries his best not to retch. It would be horrifying to start the first day on this ship exactly like it ended on the previous one.

**I don’t like hyperspace. I don’t. We’re going to be sick every time. Sick and hungry. We need food, so don’t throw up.**

“Easy to say for you.” Kylo leaves the shuttle and breathes the artificial air through his mask. A man is already waiting for him, and Kylo knows he’s Hux, the famous General Hux. Snoke was right, he does look like he’s weak of mind. But in his eyes burns a fire Kylo never saw in another human before.

“Welcome aboard, Kylo Ren,” Hux says with the utmost professional tone he could find.

**He’s not happy to see us. He already doesn’t like us.** “Thank you, General,” Kylo says, ignoring the voice.

Of course he doesn’t like  _ him _ . Hux was, before his arrival, the highest ranked officer in the Finalizer. Now that Kylo’s here, people will be obliged to obey to him even though he’s not part of the military First Order. For a lot of non-believers, Force-Users are lunatics with too much power in their hands. Nonetheless Kylo says nothing and lets Hux guide him in the Finalizer as they visit his new working place. It’s way smaller than the Supremacy, but still too big for Kylo who never liked this kind of ships. In his opinion they’re an ostentatious but useless display of power, at an age when civilizations can make weapons as lethal as nuclear strikes with the size of a TIE.

“... And that’s all for the  _ engineering  _ part of the Finalizer, I hope you understood it all, I’m not worried about that.”

Shit. He didn’t listen to any of what Hux said.

“Of course I understood,” Kylo snarls a little under his mask, his aggressivity hiding his embarrassment. “But I’d rather know about facts. How is the war progressing?”

Hux seems taken aback, but he quickly regains composure and gestures at Kylo to follow him. For a moment Kylo regrets his question. More visiting, less eating, then.

… Why is he thinking like that?  **Because I’m HUNGRY** Oh yes, that.

“Patience,” Kylo warns the creature.

“I’m sorry?” Hux asks, puzzled.

Kylo tries to find something clever to reply, other than ‘Sorry I’m talking to… myself’ and he speaks without thinking. “The New Republic for the moment is too powerful for us to try a frontal assault. But with patience it will fall. I hope you found something worth this patience.”

“Ah, oh, of course,” Hux says. “I am sure it will please the Supreme Leader.”

And Hux leads him to a room where is presented in a holovid what seems to be the most giant weapon in the galaxy. A planet of ice twisted and bent to be a super weapon, absorbing the power of a sun to destroy several planets at once. Basically a super Death Star.

“So, Ren, what do you think?” Hux proudly asks.

Kylo wants to reply that he finds that quite impressive, even well done, because it is. In term of engineering, it’s the most impressive work ever done, a piece of art, a technology never seen before. But the creature isn’t quite as impressed as Kylo is. It gets angry, looking at the holovid.  **Ilum?! They destroyed Ilum!**

“You destroyed Ilum to create a weapon?” Kylo hears himself say aggressively.

“Why… Yes. This planet was perfectly balanced, and quite useless. We put–”

“This planet was one of the most important planets in the eyes of the Force!”

“Oh  _ please _ , don’t tell me you believe in those old wives’ tales! The planet had the most perfect balance and the right size and the ideal height of land base to create the Starkiller base! You’ll get used to it, the work is already done.”

Kylo tries to control himself. Why does it care so much for a planet, all of a sudden?

“... I agree with you, it’s a magnificent wonder of engineering… Did you come up with the idea?”

Hux’s defiance gives place to pride and surprise, and he doesn’t make a remark about Kylo’s mood changes, which is good. The thing is still bubbling with hate.

“Yes, for the most part.” Hux says, smug.

“I am impressed. Now if you excuse me, I’d like to visit the rest of the ship and get used to the environment. Please free your tomorrow morning so you can tell me about the rest of the information I need to know.”

“... Naturally,” Hux answers, always polite and professional. Kylo leaves the room quickly and gets lost on purpose on the ship to feel the Force around. He’s tired, and hungry.

“Why would you get so angry for a planet? You want to destroy the universe.”

**No, not Ilum. Ilum was great! Ilum was important! It was strong with the Force! Important!**

“Oh, so you’re interested in the Force, despite the fact that you’re completely invisible to it.”

The thing laughs in Kylo’s brain, and Kylo represses a shudder.  **You naïve mortal vessel. We eat the flesh because it is good, eat the organs because it pleases us. But we don’t eat dead things, because they don’t have what** **_we_ ** **need. What we need is only in living things, leaving when the things die. We need the Force, so we chase the Force, hunt the Force. Find it wherever it hides, and we** **_eat_ ** **it.**

Kylo stops in the middle of the Hallway. The thing laughs again.  **You thought your precious god never had a predator?**

“You are mocking me.”

But the creature just laughs and laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Force is tasty, the Force is like candy bars!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo tries to make himself scarce in this new ship, hoping to regain Snoke's trust after the incident.   
> But the entity is hungry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUNGRY!

Kylo’s new chambers are as large and as empty as the ones he had in the Supremacy. His stuff has already been brought inside, and Kylo carefully places his grandfather's mask on one of the shelves of the room. Apart from that he doesn’t have much, so the place will stay empty. Not that it bothers Kylo. The creature gets more impatient every hour, and it’s difficult for Kylo not to get snappy at it.

“ **You settled,** ” the thing says from the reflection in the bathroom’s mirror, “ **now let’s find something to eat!** ”

“I don’t want to”, Kylo absentmindedly replies, and he closes the door of the bathroom with the Force to block the view of the mirror. He puts his data pads on the desk and hangs his cape. “Go find something else, something quiet, to do.”

**I can, and I will make you. Soon you will be too weak to retaliate!** “I guess it can happen,” Kylo simply says. A thought crosses his mind, and Kylo frowns. “If you eat the Force, why don’t you eat me? Why am I not dead?”

The thing doesn’t answer straight away, as it always does when Kylo asks it a difficult question. But it eventually does, after Kylo is fully settled in his new rooms.  **You look delicious, and I will eventually eat you. But not today, not the day after. You are too precious for me now.**

Kylo scoffs. “Not good enough.”  **But you are! Of all the mortals here, few can host my power, fewer can do that and still have a connection to the Force. There was a time when I had to jump from a vessel to another, all dying fast. You are an unlimited all-you-can-eat, a walking buffet that I can’t tap out that fast.** Kylo sighs and the thing laughs  **I can feel pride swell in you, mortals are so easy to satisfy.**

“Oh, shut your mouth,” Kylo snaps. But it’s right, he  _ is  _ proud to have an actual proof of his power. He’s not sure the price to assuage his insecurities in his abilities is worth it, though.

And this conversation and questions aren’t denying the fact that, yes, Kylo’s hungry, because the thing is hungry. And if Kylo isn’t careful, then everything will happen again, the loss of control, maybe this time dead people and more problems for the First Order. And Kylo can’t let that happen, because this time his head will fall.

“Alright,” he concedes, taking his mask again. “Let’s find you something to eat. Something, ugh, alive.”  **Another dog?** “Why not. Just this time let’s try to be  _ discreet _ .”

When Kylo closes the door of his chambers and starts walking in the corridors, the thing suddenly stops him. Kylo can’t move, and he stays still in the empty corridor.

“What now?” He asks, annoyed.

**Not a dog. I don’t want a dog.** Kylo is confused.  **Dogs are good for the papillae, but dogs don’t have enough Force. Sentient things have lot of Force. Sentient things with the Force have the most. But I can settle for a normal human.**

It’s too much for Kylo, who decides to go back to his room. “We are  _ not  _ going to eat a human. Not a civilized species. Not now, never.”  **They taste good! They have the Force!** “No!” Kylo violently shuts the door behind him and gets rid of his mask. “I am  _ not  _ falling into cannibalism because you like to eat  _ people _ , you… you…  _ monster _ !”

The thing hisses loud in Kylo’s mind, but this time he stands still, not afraid. He can stand the pain, he can stand the threatening tones. Once again, a head appears from his shoulder and looks down at him, and Kylo stares at it defiantly. The eyeless face whose skin is always moving like polluted water opens its mouth and unfolds its tongue with a rictus of anger and mockery.

“ **So you can follow a cult of merciless hypocrites and destroy planets, families, enslave half of the galaxy into fear and murder the other half, you can betray your family, kill your friends and relatives to follow the orders of a lunatic whose words you can’t even manage to properly and fully believe in, but it bothers you to** **_eat a man_ ** **?** ”

The spoken words hit Kylo in the face like a TIE-fighter at full speed. The thing smiles in triumph. “ **You think I don’t know the struggle? The call of the Light you try to smother? And yet you call me a monster when you try to be one sooo desperately? You and I aren’t so different. In the pathway of corpses you leave behind you, one or two more dead meats won’t do the difference.** ”

“I… I’m not…” “ **Let’s eat someone!** ”

It’s right. Kylo is already a monster. All those things it said? It’s true. And deep down it hurts way more than it should. Kylo made a choice, he decided he wanted to bring order to the galaxy, never mind the sacrifices. But… Is it really what he wants? “ **I didn’t say that to bring you a midlife crisis! Cannibalism isn’t so bad when you’re already doing genocides!** ” No, Kylo never wanted that. Kylo wants… He wants…

He gets out of the room again, as the thing disappears from view, and goes look for something– no,  _ someone  _ that would satisfy the other monster’s craving. He wanders in the ship and looks at the different areas, letting people believe he’s just checking on the machinery when in fact his intentions are not quite as professional. It’s ecstatic, in his brain. The feeling is unpleasant in his own heart. Eventually Kylo finds someone to eat, someone who’s connection is strong with the Force, maybe he could have been a Jedi if he was just a little bit stronger. But he’s not, and now he’s going to be dead, and Kylo hopes it will be enough to satisfy it. For once, Kylo lets it take control, and the creature doesn’t need to be told twice.

Kylo’s hands are changing once again, becoming covered in an ever-moving black goo, and he catches the guy by the face to keep him from screaming. Kylo can see through his own eyes but not  _ act _ , not even react, he’s completely passive as he feels and sees himself grow taller and larger and his face is covered in black and his whole body changes to become a monster. It’s like they exchanged places, and now Kylo is parasitizing the creature’s body. The thing opens its mouth wide, exposing its sharp, huge teeth, and in a powerful bite it  _ eats  _ the man’s head,, then his arms and legs, cutting the bones and arteries like it's made of paper, then his torso it simply swallows like a monstrous snake. And if Kylo wants to  _ retch _ the thing seems to enjoy itself eating a guy and leaving behind it only traces of blood. It laughs and decreases in size, and Kylo is left alone on the murder scene, blood on his face and boots in a puddle of remains.

“You are a disgusting thing…” Kylo tries to wipe the blood off of his face with his gloves but so far, he only manages to smear it from his forehead to his chin. The thing laughs and scoffs  **amateur** , and when Kylo opens his mouth to reply, a gigantic tongue gets out of between his lips to lick off the blood on his face. He’s ‘clean’, but…  **Don’t throw up** . No, he’s not going to throw up. He wipes the blood off of his boots, calls a cleaning droid and gets out of the place. Kylo goes back to his chambers in a hurry and gets rid of his clothes, he needs a shower so badly… A real one, not steam. And he goes for that. Even at max temperature it doesn’t seem to be hot enough to clean what happened out of his skin and his mind.

“What happened?!” Kylo snarls, and he hits the wall of the shower.  **We ate a guy! You are perceptive, he was strong with the Force! Delicious!** “No! You… You, in  _ my  _ body, ate a man from head to toes! What happened to the… Where did he… I can’t eat someone like that! What’s going to happen to  _ me _ ?!”

The thing chuckles and the crawly feeling increases for a few seconds before settling back to the discreet but ever-present feeling.  **Nothing. Nothing will happen to you. You keep thinking like a human, but you are not anymore. I am not** **_inside_ ** **of you,** **_we_ ** **are one. One entity. I told you, you belong to me, every part, every atom that were** **_you_ ** **became** **_us_ ** **for as long as you will be my vessel.**

“I am officially grossed out!” Kylo shudders and tries to forget the crawling under his skin.

He finishes his shower and wraps himself up in a large towel to go crash on his bed. The hunger is gone, for the moment, but Kylo is still uncomfortable in his own skin, and he’s not sure he will manage to sleep. It’s been two weeks since he last slept. Kylo rolls on his back and stares at this new ceiling, the one of a ship he’s not in for more than twenty-four hours and he already spilled blood in. He  _ is  _ a monster.

A few days go by without anyone understanding he’s the cause of the worker’s disappearance. Hux has other things to do and doesn’t care about the life of a worker, too busy as he is with his Starkiller project. So Kylo makes himself scarce, tries to understand how to work in this new environment like his master asked him to. But the more he stays in this ship and reads about the planets of the Outer Rim falling behind the First Order by force and fear, and the more he thinks about what the thing has said to him. Said thing tries sometimes to ‘comfort’ him, if that’s the word he can use. It tells him it’s not so bad, that mortals are like that and can’t help but be monstrous in their own way. It says that it happens, and that he shouldn’t be guilty now because he made this choice almost on his own. And the fact that it probably knows about Kylo’s brain and how he came to join the First Order more than Kylo himself is both disturbing and strangely awakening.

One night, after another sleepless week in his life, Kylo suddenly gets up on his bed and looks around him.  **What now?** It asks with annoyance.

“... I don’t belong here. I don’t want to be a monster, I don’t want to serve Snoke. I wanted the pain to end, I wanted to get rid of the doubts and the fear. But since Snoke has no hold on me anymore I’m not… I feel less… Lost, you know?”  **… And?** “I’ve been fooled.”

The thing appears on Kylo’s shoulder, and for once Kylo doesn’t recoil in disgust.

**“So you decide to have a change of heart, now. Humans are volatile creatures. Whatever. I guess that had to happen. Yes, Snoke manipulated you from the beginning. Does it change anything for me?** ”

“What happened to ‘ _ us _ ’?” Kylo asks with a frown. “I have my say in that. This is still my body. You still are a parasite.”

**“Do not call me that. It changes everything, right? You decided that because I told you you were a monster. But you shouldn’t be guilty–”**

“You don’t want me to think that  _ because _ you wanted to dedramatize cannibalism and instead you pushed me towards the light, making me even less likely to dedramatize cannibalism.” “ **…** ” “Congratulations, you played yourself.” Kylo gets up as the eyeless face disappears again. “I’m not… entirely sure of what I am thinking. But I’ve been _thinking_ , and I notice only now that it has been a while since I’ve had a thought of my own, you know? Between you and Snoke, I’m getting thrown around like a ragdoll. But thanks to  _ you  _ I’m realizing most of my thoughts weren’t mine. Either they’re  _ yours  _ and they’re inhuman and out of my comprehension, or they feed my pain and doubt and are probably the thoughts that have been implanted on me the day Snoke got a hold of me. When it happened, I don’t know.”

For a moment Kylo stops talking. Maybe he talks too much. He looks for his clothes, removes the wrinkles on his cape. “I’m not saying I want to follow the Light. But these several days with you, more than two standards weeks, made me realize that the Force that controlled my life, destroyed my childhood and… you know, I never got a life for myself. The Force destroyed my life and I wished I didn’t have it. But I can’t  _ not  _ have it. So I embraced the easier path. But… The Force  _ has  _ a predator. So it’s not a god-like entity.”

Kylo stops again, looks at an invisible point somewhere on the wall.

“The Force is no god. Why should I follow the extremes of a false god? Either Light or Darkness, it’s just… Hybris. It’s madness, it won’t cure whatever ails me.”

**… What are you going to do, now? Stay and pretend? We can kill them all, we could destroy the First Order.**

“You can’t,” Kylo scoffs as he clasps his belt around his waist. “If you could, you would have already killed Snoke. You’re not held by social standards and cultural behaviors. You eat, and you kill, and you eat and kill again. You are not a god either, just another life-form. You don’t want to destroy the universe you want to  _ eat it _ . But it is in your nature, you are the Force’s natural predator. I, on the other hand, have a choice.”

**This is getting interesting!** It laughs and squirms under Kylo’s skin, and Kylo ignores the crawling, he’s getting better at that.  **But** **_we_ ** **have a deal, remember? You said you would serve me.**

“We will see about that. For the moment–” Before he can say anything else, Kylo get suddenly thrown against the wall of his bedroom and stays stuck against it, a squishy sound behind him telling him he’s secured in place by the creature’s goo. He tries to squirm out of the situation, but he actually can’t, so he simply decides to stare in front of him in defiance.  **You seem to have forgotten you don’t have a choice in this matter. You are my mortal thing, my vessel. I own you. Without me you are still Snoke’s pet, a human boy with too much power and nothing to do with it but follow** **_orders_ ** **.**

“Without me you’re a starving puddle of goo,” Kylo replies in a matter of fact tone laced with anger and venom.

The thing hisses in his brain and Kylo feels his flesh and bones move under his skin, and his organs burn like he’s digesting himself. The pressure is so strong he can’t even breath, so he chokes against the wall and tries not to pass out under the pain. The skin of his neck cracks and splits open to let black goo escape, and it runs on his chin and cheeks as to swallow his face. But it stops. Everything stops. Kylo falls on the ground with a loud  _ clang  _ and takes deep and uneven gasps of air, lying down on his back. That was too close. A loud bang is heard against his door and Kylo jumps on his feet and stumbles to go to the door, rearranging his hair and calling for his helmet with the Force. He catches the helmet mid-air and hides his face to open to whoever thought it was a good idea to bother him.

It’s a stormtrooper. A mere trooper who’s keeping himself straight and brave despite the fact that he’s really uncomfortable at the idea of facing  _ Kylo Ren _ . Kylo senses it through the Force anyway.

“Sorry to bother you, Sir, but General Hux is trying to contact you and… I don’t know… You weren’t responding so… Here I am… Sir.” He salutes at the last word.

“ _ Leave _ , I will go to General Hux at once,” Kylo snarls at the poor man who can do nothing but leave as calmly as he manages. Kylo curses between his teeth and grabs his lightsaber and cape to meet Hux.

**Of course you are going to come running at his orders. It’s the only thing you know how to do. Maybe you don’t have a choice after all** .

Kylo plainly ignores it. He arrives near Hux and every officer and engineer stop their conversations to watch him arrive as he opens the door and closes it so violently few can’t notice how angry he is.

“... Ren,” Hux salutes him politely but coldly.

“General Hux,” Kylo replies. “You wanted to see me.”

“Yes. It was half an hour ago. Now that you’re here… We may have information that can interest you. We caught a resistant, earlier that day. They came with the new recruits and tried to mingle with them in the Finalizer. It didn’t last long, for Captain Phasma,” he gestures at the tall armored woman next to him, “knows every recruit arriving here.”

“I see,” Kylo replies blankly. Inside he’s pretty impressed. “And?”

“And they have information about the Resistance. I was told you are the best questioner in the First Order. Maybe it is time to show us your abilities.”

“... I fixed a ship with my mind, was it not enough for you?”  **It will never be enough** .

“Don’t be childish.”

Kylo looks at Hux for a moment. The man is not afraid of his power. He should be, he’s smart enough to be, but he’s not. And Kylo goes towards the interrogation room without a word.

He has tortured before. He has used the Force to get what he wanted, without an ounce of remorse. Now it’s different, because he realizes he doesn’t believe in Snoke’s words anymore. They have been implanted in his mind, but with the prism of the creature’s mind around, they look estranged to him. Nonetheless he enters the room and faces the resistant they caught.

A woman about his age is squirming in the chair, trying to get rid of her restraints. She stops when she sees him, and her eyes go wide in fear for a second. Kylo isn’t famous, isn’t well known by his enemies, for they all die and there’s never someone left to tell the tale. But he supposes he is intimidating enough to scare without having to be preceded by any reputation.  **Let’s eat her. She’s not strong with the Force, but I like her eyes. So pretty, so tasty.**

“You are either brave or foolish to come here alone,” Kylo says. “Are you comfortable?”

“Why do you suppose I’m alone?” She answers, ignoring his question. But just her saying that, and Kylo knows she’s alone. The Force is telling him she is.

“You are. Alone. And afraid. Don’t worry, it won’t last long. I can’t tell it’s not going to hurt.”

He extends his hand and in seconds he visualizes her mind, the barriers of her loudest train of thoughts. The fear, the defeat. She tries to resist, but there’s nothing she can do against him. So Kylo rips her brain open and goes for what he wants. The Resistance, their base, their number. Kylo sees it all. He sees the little moon used as a base for the weak but growing militia. He sees the Resistance doesn’t feel safe. He sees a man with olive skin and a bright smile, brighter than all the stars of a system. He’s comforting the girl, telling her she’s a tough one and thanking her for her courage. Near him, as he thanks the girl, is Leia Organa, looking at the girl with a hopeful smile, but sad eyes. And Kylo knows he never saw his mother with another look in her eyes. Leia has always been haunted.

Kylo gets out of the girl’s mind like he’s been burned. He looks at his hands as they start getting covered in black goo, and he simply hides them when Hux enters the room.

“Well?” The general asks with impatience.

“The Resistance has a base in the Ambria system, in the Inner Rim. But they intend on leaving, so you should hurry, General.” He looks at the girl, and a pinch of respect blooms in his heart. She gave her life for what she believed in.

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Alright then.” Hux turns towards his troopers. “Kill her.”

“What?” Kylo looks at Hux who stops his troopers with a raised eyebrow.

“What is happening,  _ Ren _ ?” Hux asks, and Kylo’s name sounds too honeyed to be respectful. “Could she be useful in any way?”

“It is disrespectful to murder her in the torture chambers. You could at least give her a proper exec–”

Hux gets his own blaster out and blows the girl’s head up, his eyes not leaving Kylo’s mask for a second.

“Are we done?”

Kylo tightens his fists so hard the leather is cracking, and an irrational thought crosses his mind that he doesn’t have claws anymore. “Do  _ not  _ push me to my limits, General Hux.”

“We have other matters to handle than a resistant’s proper execution. I thank you for your assistance in this matter, I will now send troops to Ambria. If you’ll excuse me.”

And he leaves the torture chamber, leaving Kylo alone with the corpse of a girl who died because she believed in good.  **He wasted perfectly good food. Are you still torturing your brain about what’s right and what isn’t? You should stop.**

“You’re right, and I will. We leave. Night rotation.”

**Oh, man, are we going to take a ship? Are we going into hyperspace? Hey! Answer me!**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nom nom!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can't fight this thing, can't blend into this new ship. Kylo is tired of pretending everything is alright.   
> Trying to get his life together, Kylo somewhat manages to make it worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM ALIVE! THIS FIC IS ALIVE!

Kylo enters his room in a rush and closes behind him before rotating to look at his stuff. He’s packing his bag and leaving for good. No turning back this time.  **You said that when you destroyed the Jedi Temple** .

“Silence.” Kylo hears himself say. “I don’t need your expertise on this.” And he takes the box in which he keeps the parts for his lightsaber, a few clothes and  his data pad with the intel on the First Order , and he throws everything in a black backpack. He  _ knows  _ the First Order will hunt him down and kill him, maybe his knights will try to execute him, so he better be prepared and not forget anything. While checking his whole room Kylo meets the dead stare of his grandfather’s mask. And he hesitates.

“I… What am I doing?”  **Because of the mask of the dead guy?**

Kylo drops his bag on the ground and sighs. He did exactly what he shouldn’t have; give a second thought about all this. What is he hoping? On one hand he’s been lied to, again, manipulated and now he knows Snoke is only after his power and sees him as disposable, that it’s probable he’s going to die once his master doesn’t need him anymore. Which will arrive sooner than later with the Starkiller base. But on the other hand he’s betraying everyone  _ again _ , and this time with no purpose, no belief in mind. Nothing to fight for, nothing to fight  _ against _ , nothing to believe in, he’ll just be another runaway, and everyone will want him dead and he will lose any kind of worth he has.

**Snoke’s hold on you is stronger than we thought. You have been so conditioned to think that you can’t live without your master that you start to actually believe that. Didn’t you say you wanted to leave so you could be free?**

“Free?  _ Free _ ?” Kylo almost screams. “I won’t be free, I’m your  _ vessel _ , you want to use me to eat the universe!”  **… At least you’re not easily fooled anymore.** “It’s not like you’re trying to be convincing! You just try to go my way, so I could be more compliant and let you do whatever you want! In the end you are a coward and I’m… I’m one too.” The anger is gone. Kylo is left only with fear and frustration. The thing has fallen silent after Kylo’s monologue, and Kylo still doesn’t understand what it wants, what it’s thinking, it’s all so foreign and unreadable for him. He seats on the bed and kicks the bag.

“I don’t want… I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I don’t want either. And now I am talking to myself.”

After five other minutes of complete silence, the crawls the only signal Kylo is still inhabited by the parasite, he gets up and finishes packing in silence. He takes Darth Vader’s helmet and carefully places it in his bag, not intending on living the relic behind. It’s his, after all. Finally he closes the door of his room and walks in the corridors of the Finalizer without a look back.

Kylo arrives at the shuttle bay without resistance and shops for his favorite ship to steal. Something with a hyperdrive is essential if he wants to run away as fast as possible, but at the same time he’s afraid to fall sick again while jumping and, doing so, to reduce his chances of survival to almost none. So good auto-pilot and in-combat mobility would be nice.  **Can we take a travel snack?** Mentally listing all the starfighters the Finalizer has, and he knows them all, Kylo settles  **We will be hungry** for a TIE Silencer slightly ajar from the rest of the shuttles. Kylo guesses it’s the new prototype he heard about in the reports. Two engineers work on it under the surveillance of a guard. Kylo goes straight to the stormtrooper who jumps a little when he sees him but salutes him respectfully.

“Report, trooper,” Kylo commands.

“FN-2187, at your service, sir.”

“The shuttle, do you know about the upgrades?”

“Yes, sir, she has been upgraded with a next gen hyperdrive, for the moment. Piloting’s easier, too, more fluid. Not really useful without a shield but for our elite that’s–”

“Hyperdrive but no shield, then?” There’s something in the TIE design that pleases Kylo’s eyes. Maybe the ridiculous firepower than can break any shield, or the speed and ferocity it has in space.  **This is not going to end well** . Still ignoring the parasite, Kylo nods. “I take her,” he says, more to his guest than to the confused trooper.

“... I’m afraid it won’t be possible, she can’t leave the bay as a prototype, I have strict orders–”

“FN-2187,” Kylo growls.

“... Sir?” The man trembles a little. He’s young under the helmet.

**We should eat him, he won’t be any problem anymore,** the voice suggests, and for a second it’s tempting, really tempting. But Kylo pushes the hunger aside. Survival is more important.

“No,” he simply says, “we have other matters to handle.”

“Sir?” FN-2187 asks, unsure.

**If you don’t eat, then I will eat you and you will suffer!** “So be it,” Kylo retorts. “As I said, we don’t have time for this.” Snoke probably knows already, he irrationally fears.

Kylo raises his hand in front of FN-2187’s helmet, and without any care he pushes through the stormtrooper’s brain. “You will let me take the ship without raising the alarm.”

At first the trooper is alarmed, but in seconds it passes, and he repeats with a monotonous voice “I will let you take the ship without raising the alarm.”

“Good. Perfect. Have a good day, trooper.”

“Have a good day, Sir,” the trooper replies with a salute before stepping aside from the TIE Silencer. He gestures at the engineers to step away, too, and they both do it with a little surprise.

Kylo quickly checks on the ship with the Force and, once he knows if it can fly or not, he jumps in the cockpit and starts releasing the ship from its station. With his own confirmation number he opens the doors of the bay and flies out of the Finalizer. The TIE Silencer is sensitive and extremely fast in reactions, but thanks to the Force and his training Kylo can easily manipulate it around the mothership, testing the feeling before jumping away. He’s a little reluctant at the idea of using the prototype hyperdrive, both because he  _ knows  _ he’ll be sick and because it’s a  _ prototype _ . What if it explodes? As Kylo battles against his thoughts and what is probably a little bit of the entity’s, the communication center of the Finalizer connects to his TIE. It’s Hux.

“Ren, what in the First Order’s name are you doing?”

“I’m getting out of here, General.”

There’s silence on the line. Kylo still fiddles with the controls to make sure autopilot is functional.

“You can’t be serious.” Hux sighs away from the line, then get closer again. “I have strict orders not to let you out of the Finalizer until the Supreme Leader decides so.”

“I figured that out. Everyone has strict orders in this ship.” Kylo’s proud of his... sort of... joke. It’s been a long time since he last let himself be a smart-ass. Now that he’s not in the star destroyer he feels a little lighter, maybe he can be free, after all.

“Ren, if you don’t get back on the Finalizer at once, we will be forced to open fire.”

“Open fire, then, I don’t care.”

Again, silence. Hux’s voice is borderline disbelieving, and yet there’s still this annoying professional tone. “It’s treason, then.”

This time Kylo doesn’t answer. He sees the cannons of the Finalizer turning slowly to him, ready to fire. It won’t be long before they release the TIE-fighters, Kylo knows.

“It’s time to go, try not to be too sick,” Kylo says aloud. While dodging the blasts with ease thanks to the maneuverability of the starfighter, he cuts the communicators, deactivates the tracers that also control the maps of the hyperdrive… and he jumps into space, hoping his calculations are right. If not, well, he’s dead.

The stars are running so fast they’re only dashes of light around him, and the sickening feeling of weakness is immediate. Kylo groans and hides his eyes behind his hands, convincing himself throwing up in a shuttle is  _ not  _ a good idea.  **Shielding your eyes from the sight won’t change anything.**

“Shut up!” Screaming in the shuttle is a worse idea than he thought, and Kylo is left with both nausea and a migraine. Kylo doubles over in pain and throws his helmet behind his seat. At least if he throws up, he’s not going to choke on that…  **Wow you really hit rock bottom!**

“I swear to the Force if you don’t stop right this instant…”  **So?** “I’m going to KILL US BOTH!!”

The voice hisses again, and it echoes in Kylo’s brain with such intensity it’s actually painful. For a moment he wonders if he’s going to pass out, so he stays as still as possible, a hand hovering above the control panel as to not take it in the face if he actually falls unconscious. But it doesn’t happen. Kylo’s obliged to feel awful for what seems like an eternity. The good news is, the thing is silent for a while, probably as sick as him.

Hours pass in Kylo’s mind, and he’s about to pass out for good when the voice suddenly screams in his head.  **I can’t take it anymore, we’re going to die! brake brake BRAKE!!**

And Kylo’s body moves against his will as he takes the controls and brutally gets out of hyperspace, only to find himself in the meteor rings orbiting around late Alderaan’s sun. Kylo brakes again to dodge a rock and spin around another in hope of not hitting anything. Without a shield, one hit and it’s over.

**I knew it!** “It was a lucky guess,” Kylo absentmindedly replies, too focused on the flight. He’s still sick but it’s better than in hyperspace. He dodges every broken, battered piece of the planet and manages to leave the area without a scratch. For a moment he stops and lets himself be dragged away by the empty, looking for his breath. This time he can’t push the hunger aside, it seems to go along with the hyperspace sickness. Where he is there’s nothing, Kylo knows he’ll have to jump again. This time he has to prepare it well; Not only there’s the danger of passing out for good and crashing down, but also the fact that a TIE Silencer, or any type of Empire inspired starfighter, won’t go unnoticed anywhere. Kylo quickly fills the coordinates of the closest inhabited system, which is Caamas, so they don’t have to make a longer jump. The planet isn’t the most hospitable, nor the most  _ breathable _ , but Kylo just needs to get to Refuge City and find someone to help him leave the planet safely. Easy enough, and no one will find the TIE in Caamas’ contaminated wildlands.  **This is not a good idea** .

“Stop being a coward,” Kylo says with frustration. “Besides, we don’t have a choice, we need to find someone who’ll drive us out of the Core Worlds.”  **Oh, really? How so? By spending days without food in a polluted dump?** Kylo finds nothing to reply to that. It’s right. This trip is going to be the worse so far.

“Can you survive in an unbreathable atmosphere?”  **I can make us hold a little longer, until we reach the city. But it won’t be pleasant, and we’ll have to hurry.** “Can you make us survive a crash?”  **You are asking a lot.** “But can you?”  **… Yes.** “Do it, then. If you feel we are no longer in condition to stay conscious because of  _ your  _ weakness,” the hiss echoes in his head, “make sure we survive this. I’m enabling auto-pilot, but there’s no auto-land. Be ready.”

Without waiting for an answer, Kylo jumps again. Just as he predicted neither he or his guest are in condition to hold on for this one, and he feels himself slipping. Just before passing out, all he can see is black goo slowly covering his face.

Kylo wakes up with a strangled gasp and immediately claws at his face to get rid of what’s preventing him from breathing. The panic increases when he gets paralyzed, but it quickly leaves place to annoyance when he hears the voice.  **Calm down. You can’t take it away, it** **_is_ ** **our face.** Oh, it was right, this  _ is  _ unpleasant. Kylo takes some time to get used to the darkness and the pressure around.  **Is your mask useful against this… Climate?** Kylo shakes his head and bears the hiss of frustration resonating all around him.  **Then this will do** .

Kylo gets out of the wreckage with the Force, and as he regains his eyesight, he looks around him. Caamas sure is a desolate planet, empty of life, and all the decades of cleaning is only slowly changing some regions and certainly not this one. Once he knows he’s alone and out of danger, Kylo inspects himself. His right sleeve is ripped open, and there’s blood on his shirt and pants. But so far, he has no injury. Raising an eyebrow as the only open question he can make, he waits for an answer.  **Ah, this. I protected your life, but our body still got damaged. In hyperspace, my abilities are… diminished. So when it became quiet, I healed you.** ‘Healed’ is a weak word, Kylo thinks. He has  _ nothing _ , not even a scar. Once he’s satisfied with his own health, Kylo takes his bag and starts walking towards the direction of the city. 

Hunger is slowly killing him, at least that’s the impression he has, along with the renewed intensity of the crawls under his skin. Somewhat, Kylo knows this feeling of weakness isn’t really his. What, in hyperspace, can defeat a being as powerful as his host? It’s not answering anymore, probably too busy with its hunger. The fact that mere hunger can weaken him, weaken  _ them _ so much is not a comforting idea. Nonetheless Kylo walks without faltering in the contaminated wasteland, hoping to reach Refuge City quickly. And  _ yes _ , hell to morale, he’s going to  _ eat  _ someone once they arrive. Kylo doesn’t know for sure if it’s thinking through him or not. And with all this time with nothing to do but walk and think, Kylo says to himself that  _ it  _ needs a name.

**A name?** Kylo shrugs, still unable to talk because of the thing on his face. Well…because of _his_ face. **We don’t need a name. A name is a mortal habit, you sentient food give a name to everything**. Well, he’s going to name it anyway, especially if it doesn’t have a name for itself. **You are wasting** **your time**! Kylo huffs and stays silent while walking, looking for a suiting name. Since he can’t talk, he keeps his ideas for himself, and it doesn’t make any comment about what is going through his brain.

A day passes, then another before Refuge City is finally in sight. It’s as desolated as one could have expected. Hidden under a large dome lays a small city gathering the few survivors. The only ships coming to this place are rescue cargos with supplies to decontaminate the planet. The only door to the dome isn’t guarded by armed sentinels, but benevolent welcomers. Kylo draws his hood on his face and walks closer to the Caamasis near the door, hoping to enter without raising an alarm. After all they don’t know where he comes from, they don’t know who he is. What could go wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, right, what could go wrong?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After days of wandering in the toxic wasteland of Camaas, Kylo Ren arrives at Refuge City. He has to leave the city, but discretion is not on his side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With hope that December will be kind enough to let me finish this fanfiction  
> But hey, my winning duo is back!  
> Enjoy!

The air is thicker around the dome, the purifiers working day and night to provide the dome with breathable oxygen. It’s, on the entire planet, the only habitable city, housing the few hundred survivors of the Caamasi people, and fewer travelers and rescuers working together to save Caamas.

For the moment it’s Kylo’s only hope to get out of there alive. He gathers his strength and willpower to come closer to the two Caamasis near the door and hopes for the best. Approaching the entrance he notices one of them is strong with the Force. It awakens his hunger, and he wonders if it is such a good idea, after all. But it’s too late to think about that, as they spot him and gesture at him to come closer. **Such trusting creatures** , it laughs. Kylo ignores the comment, he just wants to speak so he can interact with the Caamasis. It’s not to their advantage to raise the alarm. **As you wish** , it answers to Kylo’s silent command. It’s somewhat concerning, but Kylo has other problems to attend to than care for its sudden change of heart; he’s exhausted, in pain, _hungry_ , he just wants to go back to civilization, never mind if said civilization has fur and snouts. And so Kylo goes to the two natives in front of Refuge City.

If they seem happy to see him at first, their expression soon changes to surprise, disbelief then horror in seconds. One of them gasps and takes a step back, much to Kylo’s surprise. Okay, he’s not mister Universe, but that’s a little vexing.

“ **Wha** t…?” As soon as he speaks, with a distorted voice that is nothing like his, he _feels_ the monstrous tongue unfolding between the sharp fangs. Kylo manically brings his hands to his face… and panics as much as the Caamasis.

Though he hasn’t felt it before, he doesn’t look like anything _human_ anymore. The place where his eyes should be -he can see his hands, dammit! - are but an empty wall of black, ever-moving goo, and his face is open in two with the large mouth of the monster. **You should see your face!** Kylo snaps his fingers and the Caamasis, who were absolutely horrified _and_ confused at the same time by the situation, fall unconscious on the ground. Kylo is still shaking.

“ **Gi** v **e me** my **fac** e b **ac** k **NOW!** ” Oh, this voice is nightmarish. **It suits you. It helped you survive for two days, you should be grateful.** “I **am n** ot **grat** efu **l,** I a **m** **_terr_** _ifyi_ ** _ng_ ** ! We **wer** e **supp** ose **d to** NOT **rai** se t **he** al **ar** m!” the thing laughs, untouched by Kylo’s distress. **You didn’t even feel the change. It is… Interesting. My former hosts were in terrible suffering whenever that happened. I am glad not to have killed you.**

“ **Gr** eat.” And so Kylo tries to have his appearance back, not with the help of this _atrocious parasite_ but by sheer willpower. It seems to work and Kylo is human again, both to his and _its_ surprise. **Interesting** , it repeats. **Now let’s eat the Force-gifted one!**

“You can’t give me a break, can you?” Kylo groans.

It’s the moment said ‘Force-gifted’ opens his eyes and gets up in a hurry, ready to raise the alarm with the strength of a desperate man. So Kylo makes his choice and leaves the reins to the entity. This time, even if it disgusts him, he follows the transformation and concentrates on the feelings, the changes and at some point, the _power_ he can have over this. Just for the moment… It takes the lead. Finally awaken, bearing its full size largely exceeding the Caamasi’s, it grabs its victim by the throat as its arm changes in a tentacle to slowly wrap itself around his neck.

“ **Eyes, snack, brain, snack, liver, snack** ,” it softly sings, playing with its food at it strangles him. Though Kylo doesn’t find that funny it seems to take pleasure in the torture for a few minutes. Finally it rips his head open to eat the brain and eyes like in a bowl, its tongue folding around the organs to swallow them whole until the skull is empty. From a human point of view the sight is truly horrifying, but Kylo focuses on something else. It’s _aspiring_ the Force around and inside the now dead body. The entity doesn’t actually need to eat the flesh to access the Force.

After having emptied the Caamasi’s head then taken a snack with the liver, it throws the body on the ground and takes the door to enter Refuge City. It’s Kylo’s human form who stumbles inside, looking around to make sure there’s no witness of the scene. Once he’s sure nobody saw him, he goes further into town to mingle with the inhabitants.

“You didn’t need to be so dramatically gross about it, right? You said you need the Force, but you don’t actually eat it.” Kylo stops talking to himself as a group of aliens walks past him. “You suck it from the air. That’s the reason the grotto I found you in was a void of Force. You had managed to draw in every atom of Force around your prison.”

**Your train of thoughts goes the right track but doesn’t stop at the right stations. It is true, we need the Force. It is our food. The rest sure pleases the papillae.** “Ew.” **But it also satiates the hunger longer. Because the organs, the flesh, it contains the Force too. In a certain amount.**

“I see. Nonetheless, that was gruesome.” There’s blame in Kylo’s voice. **I decide how I eat**.

Not for long, Kylo thinks, provoking a hiss in his mind. At least the hunger is gone. When he goes past a window, he makes sure he looks human and clean, and he draws his hood further on his face before going to the spaceport.

‘Spaceport’ is a strong word for the small area Refuge City uses to land ships. It’s more like a hastily prepared dirt ground connected to the outside where the air is less filtered than anywhere else in the city. Kylo can’t imagine what it was like fifty years ago when they’ve first been destroyed. Misery, poverty, sickness, probably. Doing his best to be stealthy in the crowd, Kylo stays out of troubles while looking for a ship good enough to make him disappear. It’s not like there’s a lot of choices, but eventually he finds one which is ready to leave for the outer rim at the end of the day. After a quick bargain with the captain, Sangar, resolved with money that basically belongs to the First Order, Kylo is accepted onboard. It’s the moment Refuge City chooses to raise the alarm… for murder.

“Great. See what you’ve done?” **We couldn’t have survived the next jump without food.** “You could have left no traces,” Kylo whispers with annoyance as the Captain gathers his crew for a briefing. **The rest of the creature wasn’t interesting!** Kylo pinches the bridge of his nose.

Eventually Sangar comes to see him. “What’s happening?”

Kylo shrugs. “I have no idea. I haven’t been here long. Has an alarm like this ever rang before?”

“... Good question. Not that I know of. The place’s so desolated, they at least try to keep it peaceful, you know?” He sighs. “I hope it won’t delay our departure too long.”

“It can??” Kylo loses his composure. “Why?”

“They need to investigate! You might wanna take a walk, we won’t leave until they’re done.”

Kylo groans and turns on his heels to go back to the city itself. He goes to the market, the busiest place in Refuge City. The ambience has changed, people are concerned, worried, talking about what happened, about the gossips. Their fear is suffocating through the Force, and Kylo tries to ignore it as best as he can while shopping for other clothes. The good news is they never saw his real face. The bad news is with so few travelers around it will be easy to connect the dots, and Kylo has never worked well under pressure. He’ll have to find an alibi, _quick_. First thing first, he gets rid of his dark gear for light brown and grey civilian clothes, in which he looks more like a random traveler than a shady runaway. His new hiding equipment well in place, Kylo goes back to the spaceport, hoping they are done investigating.

It’s quite the contrary; the captain is talking with an Ithorian, but it looks more like he’s being interrogated. Kylo cringes but doesn’t run away. Both because it would be suspicious… and this ship right there is his only way to leave the blasted planet. So he casually walks up to them and stops at a reasonable distance.

“Oh, hey!” Sangar greets him before noticing the new outfit. “Oh, you got changed? Looks more comfortable and less destroyed, I have to say.”

Kylo shrugs as the Ithorian eyes him with suspicion.

“Who are you?” he asks dryly, his voice echoing a little through his two mouths.

“I am in this crew,” Kylo replies, and Force damns him if he didn’t put all of his power in this suggestion.

“He’s in my crew,” Sangar repeats with a smile.

**Clever, but leads to disastrous consequences. You** **_are_ ** **bad at working under pressure.** Kylo wants to tell it to shut up so badly, fortunately he doesn’t.

“I see,” the Ithorian says after a few seconds. “I apologize if I sounded rude, I just… with what happened, everyone is worried. I trust you, Sangar, you have been a friend of Refuge City for years now. So _please_ , if you happen to see a humanoid dressed all in black, hiding their face under a hood, do _not_ approach them, call for reinforcement. They are really dangerous.”

“Will do, sir, will do,” the captain says with his smile not faltering. He looks just a little tenser.

“We will be careful, thank you for your concern,” Kylo adds with a nod.

Once the Ithorian has excused himself and left, Sangar turns to Kylo, very stiff.

“What in _oblivion_ was that?”

“I am truly sorry about this,” Kylo lies. “But I know the murderer, and he is after _me,_ I’m sure you now understand why. Though I am concerned about the safety of Refuge City, I cannot get involved in the investigation, or it could put at risk the mission the Resistance has tasked me with. Besides, it is likely he will leave the city if I leave, for his only goal is to prevent me from finishing my mission. I run against both time and the Dark Side.”

Sangar looks at him with his mouth open.  It laughs so loud in Kylo’s mind Kylo is actually deaf for a few seconds.

“The Resistance, uh? You’re working for…”

“General Organa herself. Please keep all this to yourself.” **It gets better and better!**

“Ah, uh, yeah, no problem! So you are…” And he randomly gestures with his hands, and Kylo needs the Force to understand he means _Jedi_.

“With the disappearance of Luke Skywalker I’m afraid this title doesn’t hold as much meaning as it once did,” Kylo lies again with fake sadness.

“Sorry… Oh boy! If I knew my day would turn out like that! Uh, don’t worry, your secret is safe with me, and I’m going to help you as best as I can! Oh boy!”

Kylo stays silent while Sangar rambles about ‘helping the heroes of the galaxy’ and how ‘the First Order is a cult of heartless bastards and they’re going to make everything explode one of those days’. Eventually the captain offers the possibility of waiting for the departure inside the ship and Kylo accepts. He chooses to settle with the shipment in the cargo area, telling this is perfect and he doesn’t want to bother the crew while in reality he just wants some peace and quiet. Finally, solitude. Kylo sits cross-legged on the ground behind a crate and sighs. He’s still so tired… At least he has time to think. **Did you really have to make up such a blunt lie?**

Kylo looks up in annoyance even though there’s no one around him. “Did you help me find a sharper one? I did what I could, and if you don’t like it, it’s not my problem.” **Why so snappy all of a sudden?** “I am exhausted. These last days were heavier than I hoped.”

It stays silent once again, Kylo counts this as a victory. He closes his eyes and leans his head against the crate. “About what we talked earlier, I was thinking about names, do you remember? For you.” **I also remember being against the idea** . “Yes, well, I realized you never, not once, used mine.” **…** “Why?”

**Because you don’t have any.**

The answer hits Kylo like a Tie at lightspeed. For a moment he opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again without finding anything to reply to that.

“That’s… you’re not– this is… Pffft! This is ridiculous!” **Oh you have one, then? Tell me, which one is it? The one you rejected out of fear and resentment? Or the one of a serial mass murderer?**

This is both embarrassing and a little too real, Kylo decides with anger. But he has nothing to answer to that. Truth is, Kylo’s never been a comfortable name, and Ben has stopped being comforting the day Luke tried to murder him. But today he has a choice to make, he has a name to choose, right? **Being a nameless entity suits you, in a way you are like me. We are evolving in our environment for our survival only, to stay at our place of Apex predator. One day a name, a form, another day it will change.**

“Well that sucks _balls_ ,” Kylo hears himself say a little too loud and a little too carefree. But he is way more annoyed by the situation than he thought. **How do you want to be called, my mortal vessel?**

Staying silent a moment, Kylo thinks about it. “... I guess Ben is easier to bear.” And he believes it. No more Kylo Ren, for the moment. “What about you? I was thinking about _Void_ because that’s what you leave behind you.” **I don’t like having names.** “Void it is.”

And Kylo actually thinks it’s a good idea. For both of them. _Void_ grumbles for a while then falls silent and Kylo enjoys little peace he has to try to rest for a few hours as he waits for the ship to have authorization to take off. Finally they can move forwards to a good start.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and his new named friend go on an adventure to find peace within themselves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As time passes, I realise how much freedom I took to write this fic. But oh well, it's done.   
> Since we're actually super duper close from Star Wars IX, know that I completely created the Knights of Ren from scratch when I wrote that, and I'm not going to change that even after the release of the film. So #freeform knights of ren.   
> Okay, have fun!

“Are you okay?” A man from Sangar’s crew asks Ben with a concerned tone.

Ben simply nods, too busy fighting the headache and nausea. On the bright side, this is  _ by far  _ his best trip in hyperspace since he found the symbiote. Void is less weak, still grumpy and sick but at least it’s not dying. Ben guesses it’s because they ate mere hours before the trip instead of their usual week long of fast.

“You sure you alright?” the man asks again. “You don’t look good.”

Despite the horrible condition he’s in, Ben finds the strength to look up at him, to death-glare him so hard the guy actually leaves the place without another word. Void lets escape a small laugh that quickly fades.

Sangar said they’re en route for a small system near what was the Hutt Space. Ben doesn’t care where they go as long as he’s far enough from the First Order’s reach, so he can lay low for a while.  _ This  _ weakness is going to make his run difficult and painful, so he might as well find a place where he can stay longer than a day.

After a too long travel, Sangar’s ship finally lands on a small but green planet which looks sort of developed. It’s not Hosnian Prime, but it’s enough to call this a city. A real one. Ben sighs, happy to get out of hyperspace after so long. Void is already complaining, but Ben manages to keep the hunger under control. He’s getting good at it. At least not too bad. But he  _ knows  _ eventually he’ll have to eat someone.  **Then why not now?** Ben sighs.

“Are you always listening to what I think?” he asks as he gathers his strength and his stuff to leave the ship.  **I am hearing them even when I don’t want to. What is it that you don’t understand in the principle of** **_symbiosis_ ** **?** “Well I was hoping for some privacy in my own head, you know.”  **You’ll have to share. Get used to it.**

It’s only when Void stops talking that Ben realizes Sangar is here and talking to him. He starts in surprise, interrupting the captain in the process.

“... Sorry. I didn’t mean to surprise you. I thought you heard me arriving.”

“I was… thinking. What can I do for you?”

“We’re at destination, so I guess from here you can continue your mission. But, hey, I was wondering… I’ve always wanted to be an active part of the Resistance, and I wanted to know if you could… you know… put a good word for me?”

Ben stops himself from rolling his eyes. “Your devotion to our cause is appreciated. I will tell of your deeds to General Organa.” As if. “I am sure she will be delighted when she will know how helpful you’ve been to both Caamas and my mission. Someone will contact you, so don’t disappear. Alright?”

“It would be an honor, sir,” Sangar says with pride.

Void snickers again.  

With goodbyes as quick as they are fake, Ben leaves the ship behind him and breathes the natural air of the planet. This city isn’t so bad, the landscape is actually enjoyable, far from deserts and wastelands. From where he is, Ben can see the forests around and the fields that allow the inhabitants to be somewhat self-sufficient in food.  **And** **_we_ ** **will be self-sufficient in food, here.** Void is right, the place is strong in the Force, life vibrates in this planet.

“Alright, let’s hope it’s enough for the moment because I’m not going in another ship until we find a way to cure you of this sickness.” He salutes a man who looks at him talking to himself, and he walks away from the spatio-port.

It takes some time to find the exit of the city, it’s so intricate it looks like a miniature version of Coruscant with its numerous floors and flying vehicles, and Ben hadn’t found himself in such a place in a long time. It’s a change, but also a relief to see people that are actually happy and in peace, people who live their life with simplicity and yet still follow the course of evolution of civilization. The First Order is always talking about how no one can follow order, how people still go for destruction and chaos. But there, on this planet and with his mind somewhat free of ideas that aren’t his, Ben sees that people don’t need too much pressure to live in peace. As individuals they aren’t interesting, but if they manage to stay together in the same place and conciliate their lives and keep nature in shape then… for example this planet doesn’t need the First Order.

**Why don’t you like your own species? Isn’t it weird?** Ben never thought about that.

“Good question. I guess I just don’t like people. That happens. They’re uninteresting, sheep who follow the strong never mind where they go as long as they don’t need to think. But here it’s… at least it’s peaceful.”

Void doesn’t reply to that, so Ben simply enjoys what’s around him until he finds the end of the city. His backpack strapped on his shoulder, he leaves civilization behind to get lost in the forest.

Even dense and treacherous, the greenery is a bright sight for Ben, and he intends to live away from everyone for a while. And that’s what he does, what  _ they  _ do despite Void’s reluctance at the idea of staying far from sentient food. Nonetheless Ben is adamant about this. The dreams of eating the entire universe can wait a few weeks more, they need time to adapt to the new situation and to each other.

And so Ben makes his own little house deep inside the forest, where he knows no one will come to bother him. With the Force he lifts the wooden planks he made up in the trees, and he creates with patience and a lot of skills a wooden house high from the ground.  **We are going to stay up in the trees? I like the idea.** And Ben does, too. The first night they spend in the forest is peaceful and they listen to the inhabitants of the forest as they live their lives, oblivious of what’s happening. In the morning it’s building time again, until the house is completely habitable.

Force, Ben hasn’t lived this peacefully in  _ ages _ . It was probably his first years at Luke’s school, more than ten years ago. And now he has the chance to enjoy it again, even if it’s not for a long time. Some of the large beasts living in the forest are enough to keep Void quiet for a few days, there’s no need to go back to the city for now. It’s like a holiday! No First Order, no Jedi, no blasters or ships, nothing but them. It goes on for days and days, and Ben simply enjoys the quiet life he didn’t have in a long time. 

Ben sits on the roof of his newly built house and looks under him as a herd of little herbivorous rummages between the roots.

“Now that we have time, I think we should talk seriously.”  **What do you mean?** “I mean I have the impression you haven’t been entirely honest since the beginning.”  **If not, at least I have been patient with your shenanigans. You looked like you were happy with the current situation, do you really want to start a fight?**

Ben rolls his eyes. “I don’t want to start a fight. Understand it’s a difficult situation to share my brain with an entity I can’t comprehend. Especially when said entity is volatile and doesn’t seem to keep their beliefs in place for a day. For example, I thought you didn’t care about anything but eating the universe, yet you let me settle really really far from this idea of yours. Doesn’t it sound strange for you? Is there something else hidden behind all this? Also, if we put aside your cryptic behavior, these last days weren’t  _ that  _ terrible.”  **I think we did great!** “And I was wondering if… you know, this bound is one-sided. You use me to exist outside of your own existence. Is it possible to make this process double-sided?”

**You want us to combine our abilities under your own will** . “Yes.”

Void stays silent for a moment, so Ben resumes his observation of the fauna. The piglets are still searching the leaves and branches on the ground to find food with their mother. They are interestingly cute compared to the adult ones. Though it would be a good source of food, Ben won’t chase them. They ate early in the morning, leaving only the bones of a large bull-like beast near the river. If nothing goes wrong Ben shouldn’t have to consume any more living flesh for the next two days.

**Why do you need my powers?** Void eventually asks.

“I don’t  _ need  _ them,” Ben simply replies. “But I am interested in the possibilities it opens.”  **There’s something more.** Ben doesn’t answer to that. But it’s not easy to hide something to an symbiotic entity.  **You need to stay in control.**

“I-- It’s my body. I am  _ here _ . You can’t be friendly with me and the next minute, when I am stupid enough to let you take control, pretend that I don’t  _ exist _ . I exist.”  **You are only existing because I let you exist.** “Oh, don’t do that with me. I don’t believe you.” Ben sighs and gets down from the roof to enter the cabin. The skins of the animals they killed are still drying against the window frame, the smell of leather is already clinging to the walls.  **What do you want?** Ben pours some water in a kettle, and he places it on the little fireplace he made in the corner of the room.  **Don’t make me ask you twice, that won’t be pleasant.**

“You are one impatient, greedy, needy thing, Void,” eventually Ben replies, and Void hisses. “The reason I know you can’t get rid of me is simple. You can’t take out  _ all  _ of me because if you could then you’d already have a body to yourself that you took centuries, millenniums ago after having got rid of the former inhabitant. But since you feed off of the Force, and you don’t have it, you need your host to be complete.” He sits cross legged on the ground, waiting for the water to be hot. “At the same time you can’t shut me off and keep my conscience far in a corner of my brain so you could do whatever you want… Because then you would be truly and utterly alone.” Void stays stubbornly silent. “I am right, am I not?”  **You are presumptuous.** “And you are lying to yourself. All these beautiful words you use, you use them to make yourself bigger than you are. You desperately need to make your host think you are a god, that you are invincible. Because if they lose trust before they die, then it’s immediate conflict and it’s not a suitable environment for you. That’s why it has been so quiet, so peaceful all this time. Your biology is that you  _ need  _ someone to live.”  **It is the way it is.** “But you don’t want to make it nightmarish because even an incomprehensible creature like you has sentient characteristics. Social needs is one of them.” Ben stays silent for a moment. “Are there more like you, in space?” 

The kettle starts whistling on the fire, Ben makes it levitate to shut the fire off. By the time the tea is done, Void finally finds its voice.  **I don’t know. I forgot.** The answer is the one Ben expected, but the little voice saying it is one he never heard before.  **You have made your point. Are you happy? Did you wait all this time to eventually find something to throw back at me, in hope of a pitiful vengeance?**

“I’m not looking for vengeance. I’m still looking for answers. When I first… met you, you weren’t like this. Were you hiding your game or is there something else?” It doesn’t answer. “Fine. Keep your secrets. We’re done for today. Nonetheless I was being serious. I think we need to trust each other into a two-sided bond if you want to achieve your dream of us being invincible.”  **You are awfully chatty today** . “Feeling dethroned?” 

And just like that the tension is gone. Ben silently congratulates himself and goes back on the roof to sip his tea.  **Ew** . Water and infused water are the only things that don’t go back out when entering his body, and when he discovered that the previous day, Ben was so happy he immediately looked for something to infuse. Void indulges him for the moment, and it’s enough to keep a good mood. 

The sun is starting to set behind the forest. Not that it changes anything for Ben; he has forgotten what it’s like to sleep, it’s been weeks and weeks now. The crawls suddenly intensify for a second, and Void starts speaking again, the little voice is gone and its normal tone is filling Ben’s mind.  **I will let you a chance to experience true power. If this works, and if you use it to keep your end of the deal, then I will think about your proposition. Fail and we’re back the old fashion way.**

“Alright. Tell me.”  **We will need a mirror** . 

 

It’s early morning when Ben enters the city, ill-at-ease at the idea of having to mingle with groups of people after only three weeks of peacefulness in the forest. What if he loses control? What if they kill people? What if there’s First Order spies around?  **You worry too much. You just need to take what we need and then you can hide back in your little forest.** Ben grits his teeth but says nothing as he gets lost in the numerous streets of the city. On the largest place, a market is rising, a few early customers are already wandering around, coffee or pastries in hands as they wait for the stands to be fully settled. Though Ben has little care for this type of place, for he knows they won’t find what they’re looking for there, Void almost forces him to stay in the pathway between the stands and look around.  **Look! They have living things in aquariums! They’re selling living things here! You won’t find that in your shopstores.**

“You’re thinking with your stomach  _ again _ ,” Ben whispers between his teeth as he looks at a sort of bright blue lobster swimming in a small tank. “You asked for a mirror, We’re taking a few extra clothes and a blaster that’s  _ it  _ we’re done and we’re leaving. Do you hear me?” 

They leave the market with a plastic bag full of swimming fish.

Void is ecstatic at the idea of eating fish, talking about how they work differently with the Force because of their habitat. Ben only half-listens to him as he grabs one of the fish from the bag to put it in his mouth. The small scales crack between his teeth but Ben doesn’t mind, he has eaten worse during his time in the forest. And it’s not so bad to the taste. The little girl looking at him swallowing a living fish doesn’t seem to agree with that, though. Ben stares at her as he takes the second fish to crush it between his teeth, and he leaves her alone only when she starts crying against her mother’s leg. Ben goes back to his search of a supermarket. 

Throwing away the now empty bag of water, Ben enters the giant supermarket/commercial zone, being careful about wiping his booths before entering. He’s dirty and he smells like wood, leather and smoke, that he knows. In the outside it didn’t make any difference, and nobody really paid attention to him, but here, a  _ lot  _ of people are turning their attention to him and that makes him really self-conscious.  **Are you shy, all of a sudden?** Ben doesn’t answer that, instead he carefully hides behind a cold expression and he goes right for what he needs. He still has credits, but not his usual unlimited resources, so he stays careful with his expenses. He settles for a flexible mirror paper he can stick against the wall, it will be easier to bring it back to the cabin, and he takes a few extra clothes because his outfit is suffering his new lifestyle. As for the blaster he goes for the less civilized parts of the city, to raise less questions. His shopping done, Ben decides he doesn’t need to stay in the city any longer than necessary and despite Void’s insistence they go back to the forest, where he feels safer for the moment. Either way they can’t stay out for too long, they settled very far from the city, Ben hadn’t realized that until now. Well, at least he won’t have to go back for a while.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben discovers a little more about his new "friend", and sees their new capacities with hope for their future plans.

“So, what do you need a mirror for?” Ben asks as he sticks the reflecting surface against one of the walls of his tree house. **I don’t. You do.** “That’s enlightening.” 

Once the mirror is well placed, Ben eventually faces himself. It’s been days and days since he hasn’t seen his reflection, and he’s not at his best; he’s not shaved and his hair is longer, a few more weeks like this and he’s a wookiee. 

“At least you were right, I did need a mirror. I’m going to do something about looking human again and we can start.” **Humans are so vain.**  

Ben doesn’t listen to it and he goes for the river with his knife and new clothes. When he’s back at the tree house he recognizes himself more, and he even had recovered some colors compared to his first days parasitized. He still looks like shit, though.

**Are you done? Good. Before you can even grasp the power we have at the tip of your hands, you need to see what we really are, and accept it. Most of my vessels, apart from the excruciating pain they experienced when changing, couldn’t accept this change. They were Jedi, most of them. Trained guardians of the Force who mingled a little too close with what they couldn’t comprehend.**

“How many vessels did you have?” Ben wonders how many Jedi got caught in the same trap.

Void seems to think about that before answering. **For the past twenty-five thousand years, I killed two thousands and eighty-five Force-Users. Three hundred were Sith or users of the Dark Side. A thousand of them were experienced Jedi. Eventually some of them decided to stop me, that cost them fifty Jedi more to trap me. It was eons ago. The most resilient vessel I’ve had before you was a master Jedi. He painfully died after three months of difficult cohabitation.**

“Do you remember them all?” **I remember how they tasted.** “Fair enough, let’s stop this conversation here and continue on what we were doing.” **Alright.** “Show me what we are.” 

Instead of changing only the reflection in the mirror like it did on the Supremacy, Void takes control of Ben’s body to transform it just like it did to eat the Caamasi. This time Ben can see the transformation, and he disappears under the black gooey matter to become something else. Void, or at least the form it shows, smiles at its reflection with its usual fanged smile. But Ben can move his arms, this time. Well… _their_ arms, he would say. He has control over this form, for the moment. It’s not painful, and the crawls have dimmed. So he takes a few minutes to observe the creature he has in front of him. 

He’s taller by at least a meter, larger too, and on his arms and shoulders are black scales that move when he breathes, like they’re as light as feathers. It seems his skin can’t stay in place, and flows like a river all around this inhuman form. Not only his hands, but also his feet end with large claws that immediately scratch the wooden floor under him. **What do you think?**

“ **I** th **ink** w **e’r** e **h** id **eo** us,” Ben replies with the distorted voice from this appearance. **No one asked you.** “Y **o** u **jus** t **di** d.” **I want to know what you think of the maneuverability!** “O **h**.” 

Ben moves a little with this body, tries to find his center of balance. He will probably need time to be completely at ease in this too massive, too heavy, too changing form. **This isn’t the only one we have. We are changing, adapting. Though this one is the easiest to control for me when my vessels aren’t quite cooperative, or the fastest to change into in the heat of the battle, our peculiarity is that we don’t have any form, thus we can change into everything. If you want claws? You have claws. You want wings? You have wings.**

The idea of a shape-shifting weaponry is tempting, Ben has to admit. With this, the First Order wouldn’t stand a chance, nor would the New Republic. **You like it, then?**

“ **I** thi **nk** I **cou** ld **g** et **use** d **to** it.” **You… Are not repulsed?** “W **hy wo** uld **I** b **e?** ” **Mortals usually are. Interesting.** “ **Wha** t’s **the** fo **rm** _y_ ** _ou_** **ar** e t **h** e m **os** t **com** for **ta** ble **wit** h?” 

After a moment of silence, Ben shifts again, this time he feels it and this is at best unpleasant, at worst painful. The appearance he faces is a little shorter than the previous one, but still higher than his own height. But what strikes Ben first in this form isn’t the way the goo moves faster and with less precise shape, nor the way the frame seems not to want to stay in place.

“ **You** … You **ha** ve a cl **oak**.” **I do**. “T **hi** s i **s** … b **y** **fa** r… **th** e _g_ ** _oo_** _fie_ ** _s_** _t_ th **ing** yo **u’v** e d **one** **si** nc **e** **th** e b **eginn** ing.” 

And maybe Ben shouldn’t have said that because the second after he spoke his mind he loses control over this body and finds himself a bystander in his mind. Void looks at itself in the mirror, when it moves it seems it has a sort of offset between some parts of its matter, like they have a mind of their own and accept to move only a quarter of seconds after. 

“ **You never know when to stop, do you? This appearance is the closest I have to a real humanoid form.** ” Under the hood of the cloak, its still eyeless face turns right and left, the movement is mesmerizing with the moving matter. “ **Though I don’t have any form like you mortals do, I still have a genetic memory, and every living thing I’ve come to symbiose with, I’ve kept a part of. The Force Users being the most important part of my vessels, I have kept** **_things_ ** **from them. Jedi outfit never changed, you always hide behind large cloaks and hoods. And, unintentionally, I have this trait when I change into a humanoid form. Still, this is still a part of us, something you can use and change. It can become as hard as durasteel, as sharp as a blade. It is a weapon, it is** **_intimidating_ ** **.** ” 

As fast as it changed Ben recovers his true appearance and he loses his balance because of the sudden change. He falls on the ground with an _oof_ and stays in a sitting position in front of the mirror. 

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention to vex you. I simply wasn’t expecting it,” he tries. He thinks it, too. He himself had capes and cloaks on his outfit, and he was so careless, it got worn out at every battle. As an attempt to make peace, Ben simply changes the subject. “Your favorite appearance is more difficult to control, the changes, I’ve felt them, too. More than for the first shapeshift. But if you want, I can learn to master it so we can use it in battle.” **You would try?** “Yes.” 

The pressure dims and the crawls are back to their usual. Ben assumes that means Void is happy, or at least less angry. The experience has been enlightening, also gratifying because it feels good to know no one could have done this before. So, yes, he’s willing to make an effort and learn to control this unsettling form. 

Ben gets up and brushes the dust off of his clothes, his balance found again. It’s just a matter of getting used to it, he thinks. He wouldn’t be the strongest Force User if he couldn’t do that. **You’ll see, we will be unstoppable, no one can stand a chance.**

“Well, there’s still the hyperspace problem,” Ben casually replies as he gets out of the house. He jumps down and lands with a huff. “And this is problematic at best, lethal at worst.” **Ah, yes. We don’t hold well in hyperspace. Too fast.** “Any other weakness I should know about?” **Fire is bad. Full crushing, too. I would survive, but you wouldn’t.**

Ben sighs. “Great. At least the main threat is hyperspace. We have to find a solution about this.” The crawls get a little stronger. “I know you don’t have the answer. You’re not all-knowing. But I’m going to find something.”

And while he wanders in the forest, Ben searches for an answer. They can’t _avoid_ hyperspace, and though he’s at peace on this planet, they still have to destroy the First Order, the New Republic too if they get in their way. A part of his brain also wants a solution because that’s totally unfair if he suffers a weakness _he_ doesn’t hav--

An idea crosses Ben’s mind and he stops walking.

“The reason we’re both in bad shape in hyperspace is because _you_ feel it. Because _you_ feel bad.” **Yes** . “What if you didn’t feel it?” **Then this would imply too much.**

“Think about it,” Ben urges Void. “If, in this symbiose, you can put _me_ out of the way, then you can put yourself out as well. This would cut you from external sensations, such as hyperspace.” **How am I supposed to survive?** “You said that I was, and I quote, an ‘unlimited all-you-can-eat buffet’. Though that was delicate and poetic, it means that in these moments you can feed off of my connection to the Force. I wouldn’t be able to use your abilities, and probably I wouldn’t use a hundred percent of mines, but I wouldn’t be _dying_. And neither would you.” 

After a too long silence, Void replies with an angry tone, its mood as changing as the wind. **That would make me most vulnerable.**

“And you don’t trust me?” Ben asks with an almost accusing tone. “You think I would use such an opportunity to get rid of you?” The silence speaks thousands words. “Fine. Stay stubborn. But at our next trip you’ll see how easy it could have been, and I hope that it will make you reflect on this idea.” 

And Ben resumes his hiking, not at all bothered by Void’s silence. The day is too enjoyable to pout over a symbiote’s whim. Finally, he has a way to finish the First Order once and for all and, why not, get rid of everything in his way. As he stops near the river to look for flowers to infuse, he hears the distinct rumble of a herd of large beasts running in the forest and destroying bushes and branches in their way. They’re not particularly smart, and once one of them starts running, they all do. Something must have scared them off.

 **You owe me food** , Void suddenly demands, and Ben raises an eyebrow. **I want to eat one of those creatures. If you say no I will hunt myself.**

“You’re greedy,” Ben sighs, shaking his head. “I guess it’s a good opportunity to try your abilities under my will.” **Fine. You can play. I just want food.** The idea ‘ _comfort food’_ crosses Ben’s mind but the hiss in his brain stops this train of thoughts. His flowers forgotten, he jumps on his feet and listens to the sound of the herd. They’re running to the outskirts of the forest. In a moment they will be on the hills. 

“Can we catch up?” Ben asks. **Yes**. “Marvelous.”

For once Ben _decides_ to let himself be covered in black goo and once he’s fully transformed he launches himself in the air with an inhuman speed, destroying the branches with only his momentum. At the last moment he catches a tree to stop his fall, and he extends his arm to grab another tree. And he jumps again. Without thinking too much about it, he changes back to his human form to pass between two trees without destroying them, and he shapeshifts only his legs to land on the ground without taking any damage. He repeats the process until he catches up with the herd. This was the most exhilarating thing he’s ever experienced. **You did well, so far. You’re good at this, for a human.**

“Shut up. Say it. You are impressed.” **I am impressed.** “Thank you.” **Now go catch food.**

Hovering above the herd, Ben chooses his target and, entirely focused on it, he changes his right arm into a blade sharp enough to cut through bones. This process is harder than just playing with the matter, but he endures the pain until it fades once the weapon is created. But as he’s about to jump on the back of the beast, another sound scares the herd. They start running again. Ben grits his teeth.

Jumping directly on his victim, Ben doesn’t let it time to escape. They both go flying through the bushes as the beasts trashes and Ben stabs it through the spine. Their momentum gone, eventually the creature stops sliding on the grass and weakly kicks in the air. Still alive, good. Ben, on top of it, is in the middle of changing his weapon back into a normal hand when a voice resounds not far from him, making him startle and stop in his tracks.

“Wow!” A man shouts. “Hi there!”

When Ben raises his head, and he curses himself for not having been careful about his surroundings, he faces four armed men. **Eat them! Let’s** **eat them!** But they can’t. This uniform… They are Resistance. 

His arm still in the beast’s ribcage, Ben raises his eyes higher to look at the man who talked to him. He knows him, he saw him in the girl’s mind. 

He’s trapped. He can’t kill Resistance officers yet.

“... Hi,” he finds himself replying as casually as he can, just as if he didn’t have a monstrous arm stuck in a suffering animal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New food! I mean... Friends! New friends!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben meets the Resistance in a delicate situation, and has to make a difficult choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am *so* happy this fanfic pleases people!   
> I've worked on it for a while, and I have a few chapters stored in my computer, I just wasn't sure it was worth sharing (and then I didn't have time to share it anyway)  
> Alright enough rambling  
> Enjoy!

Ben tries to stay still as the Resistance soldiers face him, at least as awkward as he feels. The crawls under his skin are so present it’s almost as if they were visible. Maybe they are. The highest ranked officer, the man from the memory, comes a little closer while sheathing his blaster.

“Hey, uh, sorry to bother you in your…” He gestures at the beast and Ben hides his arm a little deeper inside, making a too loud squishy sound. The beast faintly cries. “... Well, we got attacked and our ship crashed here. I saw there’s a city not far from there...?”

“It’s far,” Ben immediately replies. “eight hours of walk from there if you don’t take any break.”

“Oh.” The man sighs, throws a sorry glance at his crewmates. One of them groans. They all look dirty and exhausted. “Er… Are you from the area?” 

**What are you doing?** “Yes, I am.”  **Why aren’t they dead?** “You’re from the Resistance, right?”  **… You’re stuck, aren’t you?**

Despite all his efforts and good intentions, Ben can’t change his arm back. He’s too stressed to control it. It had been difficult to create it, but he didn’t think it would be  _ that  _ impossible to manipulate. Void doesn’t seem in a rush to help him out. 

“Could you…” The man hesitates. “Sorry, can you help us reach the city?” 

A little round droid emerges from the bushes and frantically beeps about the ship being unusable, but it stops and stares at Ben when it sees the scene. It then goes hiding behind the legs of its human. Ben has seen units like this one in the First Order, but never with bright colors like that. 

“Is that a BB unit?” He asks.  **Who cares?** Ben doesn’t. But somewhat, he feels this peculiar droid is important. And it’s acting strange. And it’s broken.

“Oh, yes! Name’s Beebee-ate! Ah, and I’m Poe and this is Pax, Jess and Nien. And you are…? Are you okay?” 

Caught by surprise by the question, Ben looks around him, then sees his arm is still plunged in the dying beast up to the shoulder.

“Yes. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” 

“...Need a hand?” Poe asks.  **Hey! Now** **_that_ ** **is funny!**

“No,” Ben replies to the question and Void’s comment. He then breathes deeply, focuses on changing his arm. After a painful minute he gets his normal arm out of the animal. “The city is that way, north of here, through the forest. The greenery is dense but not that treacherous. You should be fine.” 

“So you’re not guiding us?” 

Before Ben can reply, the girl named Jess interrupts him. “It’s okay, we can manage, thank you for your time.”

Though it makes Void laugh, Poe looks at his crew member with wide eyes. Jess simply grabs his arm and drags him away from Ben and to the forest, followed by the rest. The droid turns on itself twice before rolling after them with a high-pitched beep. Ben looks at them leave with a frown, and he angrily opens the beast back in two with a kick. Who does she think she is? They’re alive only because he spared them, because they are useful against the First Order. Yet she treats him like he’s a savage? Sitting on his victim’s almost dead body, Ben sighs and rips the flesh open, letting Void choose whatever it wants to eat.

**She vexed you** , Void points out. 

“She’s an idiot. She should be thankful to be alive. Not for long, for their droid seems to have taken damage in the crash, and it’s missing its antenna. They’ll be lost before midday, I guarantee it.” 

He licks the blood off of his fingers and leaves the rest of the corpse to rot. Void isn’t interested in that anymore, Ben can feel its attention is on the Resistance. With a sigh, he walks home in his human form. It wasn’t exactly a win, for him.  **Don’t let this encounter dim your mood. Remember that they are alive only because you are merciful. As soon as they are no longer useful they will know our wrath.** A little cheered up by Void’s words of comfort, Ben allows himself a faint smile and wanders through the forest to reach his treehouse. With the Force he senses the four soldiers not far, and probably already lost.  **We didn’t bet.** It’s understandable, droids always have a hard time finding their way in the outer rims, especially when they took damage. Despite his better judgement he goes to their direction and stops before they can see him. BB-8 sadly rolls back and forth with discreet beeps while ‘Pax’, a frustrated human, tries to make his tracking device work. Poe is casually leaning against a tree, looking around. ‘Nien’ is examining a plant Ben knows to be toxic, and Jess paces back and forth near them.

“If you hadn’t fled the local we wouldn’t be lost,” Poe says with a shrug.

“He…  _ weirded  _ me out, okay? I had a bad feeling about this, I didn’t trust this guy! And we won’t be lost for too long, just the time for Pax to calibrate the tracker and we’re good.”

BB-8 warns his group of a humanoid presence and Ben reveals himself with a sigh. He makes sure he doesn’t have blood on his face before walking closer. 

“There’s no signal on this forest, so good luck with your device.” 

Poe stands up with a relieved smile. “Oh, hey! I’m glad you’re here! Sorry about earlier, it’s, you know, it’s difficult to trust people, for Jess.” 

The way he backs up his friend is cute, Ben thinks. 

“You said you’ve been attacked,” Ben says. “Was it by the First Order?” 

And probably this guy wasn’t expecting to hear this name in the mouth of a supposed local of an outer rim planet, because his eyes widen and all his friends get up at the same time. Ben shrugs. 

“We may have a common enemy. For this, I will forget the insult and help you find your way. Were you attacked on this system?” 

“Yes.” 

“Kriff. Around this planet?” 

“... Yes.” 

“Kriff.” 

**Are they on your heels? Is it your knights?**

“Kriff,” Ben repeats again. If the knights are really chasing him, then he’ll have a hard time playing hide and seek. But it seems impossible that they picked up his trail so quickly, so easily. Maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s just his bad luck. Ben raises his eyes to look at Poe. Of all the places they have to fight in this galaxy, they had to fight  _ there _ .  **Do you want to fight? To run?**

“I will lead you to the city,” Ben eventually says. 

“Oh, uh, thanks a lot,” Poe replies with surprise. 

Without another word, Ben gestures at the group to follow him, and he makes his way towards the city. At best it will be night when they arrive. But it’s likely they ask for a break, especially if they just got out of a fight against the First Order. 

For the moment they walk behind him without a complaint, following his pace without too much difficulty. Void is boiling under his skin, but Ben can’t know if it’s because of the presence of sentient food or the news about the First Order. Whatever they’re doing here, it’s now a matter of time before they are fo--

“So,” Poe rudely interrupts his train of thoughts, “How do you know them? The First Order?” 

“Is it your business?” Ben dryly replies. 

“Well, I just… I mean I guess they already came on this planet--” 

“No they haven’t… yet.”  **Because of them they will.** “But if you’re here then it’s only a matter of time, now, isn’t it?” 

“You’re not a local,” Poe points out, walking next to him. 

Ben doesn’t answer. Two ships fly past them above the trees, and though they are hidden from its view he has the feeling it’s exactly the First Order, looking for the Resistance. Now he just hopes the First Order won’t be at the city before they are. 

The Resistance soldiers have fallen silent before his lack of conversation, and they just walk behind him as their droid scans their surroundings as best as it can with its injuries. 

**Are we leaving the planet?** Void suddenly asks.  **Because if not then it’s absolutely stupid and careless to go to the city now. All they need is a spy at the right place and we’re done for.**

“We won’t be,” Ben machinally replies. He curses when he remembers he’s not alone. “Sorry,” he says to ease Poe’s confusion. “I was thinking out loud.” 

“Oh, okay,” Poe replies. “That happens a lot?” 

“Too often.” 

“It’s not so bad, I had a friend who did that a lot on Hosnian Prime.” He chuckles. “Thanks again for helping us, Whoever you are you’re a good person.” 

Ben stops in his tracks, startling the group, and this time he turns towards Poe to fully stare at him. 

“ _Thanks_? _A_ _good person_? How-- What-- What gives you the right to say that after mere hours in my presence? Have you no sense of self-preservation at all? How can you give full trust to someone you don’t know? For all that matters, this could be a trap.” 

Poe looks at him with surprise, a little too long for this not to be awkward and Ben shifts his weight from one leg to another, embarrassed. He didn’t mean to vocalize that. Eventually Poe sighs.

“Aw man… Listen, buddy, sometimes you  _ have _ to trust strangers. If not, then you can’t move forwards. Also, chasing bulls bare handed makes you a weirdo but not automatically a dangerous man, and I don’t know you enough to know if you’re actually a dangerous man or just a weirdo. All I can see is  _ you _ helping  _ us _ . If it was a trap we’d already be dead.” He looks at his crew with affection before looking at Ben again. “Now you have secrets, it’s fine, I get it, everyone needs to have secrets. That doesn’t mean you’re going to sell us to the First Order. I’m sorry if you think you can’t trust anyone.” He sighs again, and finds his smile back in a second. “But thanks for your concern. We’ll be careful.” 

Ben finds nothing to reply to that. BB whistles near its master, a binary way to show its happiness and Poe pats it on its spherical head with a laugh. Ben sighs. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”  **We are not sorry, don’t be sorry! This man is a careless snack.** “Let’s get to the city before the First Order finds you.”

And just like that he starts walking again in the forest, not looking at any of the Resistance soldiers. Ben doesn’t want to admit it, but Poe’s speech touched him. Those were the words of a man who still believes in kindness and selflessness, someone who still believes the galaxy is good, worth it. And somewhat Ben can’t decide if it’s stupid or beautiful.

After a long time of silence and steady walk, suddenly Ben hears a sound behind him and stops. Nien and Pax have stopped walking, they’re resting against a tree with a tired expression. Jess sighs and throws an apologetic glance at Poe. 

“Sorry… it’s just… we’ve been walking for two hours and… We need a break. We need a break.” 

Is this two hours already? Ben didn’t realize. Poe groans but he sits next to his friends, and suddenly everyone but Ben is sitting.

“Is this for real?” Ben asks, incredulous.  **They are weak. They can’t walk off a crash.** “Yes, I can see that,” Ben mumbles between his teeth. He then says aloud, “We’ll have to spend the day here and travel by night.”  **And what do** **_we_ ** **do, now?**

Ben looks around him, annoyed. Maybe discussing this with Void in public won’t help. As he’s about to walk away Jess calls him back.

“Hey! Sorry about this but can you  _ not  _ leave us here?”

“I won’t,” Ben dryly replies. He  _ should _ , but if assets of the Resistance disappear here that won’t help him. As long as they’re alive he is target number two. “I just-- I won’t go far. Rest.” 

And he goes out of their sight, closer to the river so the sound of the water running covers his one-sided conversation. “What now?” 

**We should leave them here and get off this planet. Unless you want to fight the First Order. If those are mere soldiers it will be easy to kill them, but if there’s Knights of Ren, I am not sure you are prepared for such a confrontation.**

Ben shakes his head. “We can’t leave like this, there’s still the hyperspace problem.”  **I won’t--** “This is  _ not  _ the conversation! We have to find a solution about the Resistance  _ now _ .” 

Void doesn’t answer, and Ben understands it doesn’t care, it’s not its fight. So the choice is Ben’s. Does he really want to put his vengeance, his survival at risk for a couple of nobodies who work with his estranged mother on a daily basis? Wouldn’t it be easier to leave them there and take the first shuttle off this planet? But to go where? To do what? And if he helps them, then what? 

Another ship flies past him, still blind above the greenery. But not for long. They have to move before they send the sentinels. 

Ben comes back to the Resistance soldiers quickly and urges them to get up.

“Up. You’re followed,” he warns them. “We have to press forwards or we are all dead.” 

They all get up without a complaint, and even if pain and exhaustion is visible on their faces they follow him once again, not minding the pace. Following the river, Ben reaches his treehouse in record time and jumps on the platform by reflex. A quick glance down, he sees they won’t be able to do the same. So he unfolds the rope, lets the Resistance attach BB-8 and climb at their own pace. 

“Who are you?” Poe asks as he hauls himself on the platform.

“Questions, always. Hide in there, you’ll be safe. Just… Don’t touch anything. I mean it.” 

Ben helps the others and opens the door to his humble house to let them settle inside. A quick check at the sky and through the Force, he’s sure they haven’t been found… yet. Closing the door behind him, Ben looks at his unexpected guests.  **This is getting out of your hands. You were strangely more in control under Snoke’s command. Maybe you are just** **_that_ ** **bad.**

As Pax and Nien settle against a wall with a relieved sigh and Poe checks on his droid, Jess looks at herself in the mirror.

“That’s a big mirror,” she points out. “Kriff, I look like shit.” 

“That happens to the best of us,” Poe casually replies. 

“Not to you,” Jess retorts while doing her hair.

“Not to me, no,” Poe says with a fatalistic tone. “I could be on a torture table and still look good!” he then jokes. Jess and Poe exchange a laugh before joining their friends on the ground. 

Once Ben is sure they’re not going anywhere and they’re just going to sleep, he gets out of the house to sit on the roof.

**What are you going to do?** Void asks.

“Meditate,” Ben simply replies. “Once they are rested I am going to guide them to the city. After that… I don’t know yet.”  **Why are you doing this?** “The First Order is our priority. Snoke is after us, you can be sure of that. So as long as he’s alive, every foe of him is an ally of mine. Especially if he turns my knights against me. As of today, survival is everything to reach vengeance. So the rest, clans, sides, feuds, war… It’s meaningless. In any case it’s us against the rest. Once Snoke is dead, then we’ll see.”  **I see. If your guard is against you, what are you going to do?**

Ben has thought about that since the day Snoke sent him away to the Finalizer. The answer is evident, but still. It hurts to say it. So he stays silent, crosses his legs and closes his eyes. 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben helps the Resistance, knowing all too well it's going to backfire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle your seatbelts, it's action time!

The sun is already disappearing behind the trees when Ben goes back in the house. The rest of the day has been lost as he waited for the soldiers to be rested enough for the trip. None of them is really hurt, and they do look better after having slept. 

“There you are!” Poe greets him. “We were wondering where you were.” 

BB-8 rolls happily back and forth, beeping about everybody being ready to go. Just in case everything goes horribly wrong, Ben picks up his backpack still full of his belongings, his blaster, and he says goodbye to his too few weeks of vacations. 

“Let’s go. I will leave you at the city.” 

“Thanks!” Poe says for his group. “Uh, I don’t want to abuse of your kindness but… Do you have anything to eat?” 

“No…” Ben looks around. “No, I don’t. You’ll have to find that in the forest.”

Though they look disappointed they don’t say anything, and Ben doesn’t wait much longer in case they have another question he can’t answer either. They quickly get BB out of the treehouse and go through the greenery, the soldiers more aware than when they first arrived. It’s night already, and if Ben doesn’t need a flashlight, the others seem to struggle with the branches and roots in the dark. It’s BB who lights the way for its friends, despite Ben’s warnings about being seen. But hours pass and no one chases them, nothing hunts them down. While the Resistance soldiers look for something to eat in the forest, and find fruits to satiate their hunger, Ben listens to the sound of the critters in the bushes and makes sure nothing comes in their way. But the night is silent save for their steps on wood and dried leaves. And before dawn they’re at the edge of the woods. The city isn’t that far, now, its towers are visible from the distance. Half an hour more of walk between the fields and they should reach the gates. 

“There it is. The city. It shouldn’t be too hard to find someone eager to help you.” 

“So this is where our ways part?” Poe asks. He looks around. “You’re not leaving the forest.” 

“I don’t think this is a good idea. You are First Order magnet. I prefer to keep out of this.” 

“Alright, fair enough. Thanks again for you help, pal, stay safe!” 

The Resistance soldiers wave at him and leave for the city, and for a moment Ben stays at the edge of the forest as he looks at them going. From this distance, the city looks peaceful. Despite the early hour there’s already ships hovering above, landing or leaving. Soon the Resistance will be in one of those space crafts, leaving the system and never coming back. Nonetheless the harm is done, and the First Order has set foot on this planet.  **That’s not good. That can’t be finished like this. Not good.** And Void is right, something is about to happen. Ben senses it through the Force. 

“Let’s offer them two hours. If nothing happens, we’re going home.”  **And if something happens?** “We leave this place.” 

Putting his backpack on the ground, Ben sits between the roots of a tree and stares at the city.

 

As it turns out, two hours is a long time to wait without having anything to do. But since Ben is stubborn, he endures the waiting with little patience he has until the time is up. And two hours pass. And nothing happens.  **That was a waste of time.**

“Well, we couldn’t know until we waited,” Ben tries to believe in what he says, but inside he’s bubbling with frustration. Two hours of his life lost. 

Ben gets up and stretches with a groan, ready to go home. A building explodes in the distance, and smoke rises above the city. Stopped in his track, staring at this for a few seconds, Ben can’t believe it. 

**Let’s get out of there,** Void says.

“Agreed.” Grabbing his backpack, Ben runs to the city before it goes crashing down with his only way out. 

 

The citizens are running for their lives in every directions as the buildings collapse one after the other. Shots are fired in the distance, and the guards of the city don’t know where to begin with. With a curse, Ben hides behind the corner of a wall and looks at the enemies. They don’t wear trooper armors, and he understands the First Order doesn’t want to be too public yet. This place is too well-connected to risk it. Anyway, the results are the same: the city is being destroyed because four soldiers of the Resistance have been spotted on this planet. Ben suddenly wonders what they have done, what they  _ have _ , for the Order to be so drastic about them. 

Two shots are fired in his direction, and it’s Void who dodges them with ease as it takes control.  **Stay focused** , it growls,  **we have to reach the space port** . Ben draws his blaster and fires back, killing the two soldiers instantly. Are they mercenaries? A new unit he doesn’t know about? Following the walls to escape the war zone, Ben tries to remember the way to the space port. Trusting the Force, he runs between the bullets and shoots enemies after enemies until, by force of habit, he almost shoots Resistance colors. 

“Don’t shoot!” Poe yells as Ben aims. 

“You’re still here?” Ben doesn’t lower his weapon. “Why?” From the corner of his eye he can see the three others are safe as well.

“And you’re here,” Poe points out. “We got caught. They shot at us, killed our pilot. Beebee’s still at the spac--” 

“I get it, I get it,” he interrupts him with frustration. “Thanks to  _ you  _ I have to leave too.” 

“Sorry,” Poe mumbles, lowering his eyes for a second. “Can we help?” 

**Yes! No more hyperspace alone. You almost killed us last time.** “If you weren’t so uncooperative,” Ben hisses between his teeth. 

“What?” Poe asks, confused.

“ _ Yes _ , yes, you can help.”  **Why is this so hard for you to pretend you are normal? This is terrible.**

Ben turns around and shoots at an enemy to vent out his anger against Void.  **It’s not my fault they think you’re crazy. Not my fault. Yours.** And even though  _ yes it is _ , it’s Void’s fault, Ben says nothing. He keeps everything to himself and begrudgingly follows the Resistance into the battlefield. 

 

They reach the space port unharmed, and BB is waiting for its friends behind a forgotten crate, beeping about a patrol of enemies and no one to help them. The guard is probably spread thin in the city to help the civilians. In the space port, there’s only First Order soldiers and broken ships. A few of them are still in good shape, but well guarded. 

Looking like he’s got no sense of survival, Poe charges at one of the best-looking shuttles and shoots the two nearest enemies before fumbling with the doors. BB gets out of their hiding place too, to go help, and so does the rest of the group… except Ben. He’s not crazy. He’s aware of their surroundings. What they’re doing? It’s suicide.  **If they get killed we’re trapped here. I’m not going on a ship alone.**

“You’re not alone I know how to  _ pilot _ ,” Ben accusingly says.  **Don’t care. Don’t want.** “Stubborn thing.” 

Ben gets up to join them but as that moment a squadron of heavily armed men arrive to kill the Resistance. Thinking fast, Ben stays hidden from view and calls to the Force, collapsing a broken spacecraft on them. They scream in surprise, caught unaware, and don’t have the time to react. Eight birds with one stone. 

“What the…?” Jess startles in front of the ‘accident’.

Ben uses the moment of surprise to run to the Resistance. He pushes Poe and BB and opens the shuttle, more with the Force than the actual buttons since the ship is in security mode, and he urges everyone inside as the blasts of another charge of enemies explode around them. 

“We leave  _ now _ !” he commands, and they all agree without any question. 

Immediately, Poe takes the pilot seat as his friends decide in seconds who does what, and soon everyone is settled for the upcoming aerial fight. Everyone but Ben, who sits in a corner of the shuttle in silence, dreading what’s coming at literal light speed. Orders and warnings are exchanged above his head, and the spinning and startles of this peculiar ship, which has  _ nothing  _ of the stability of a TIE, do nothing to help. He never thought he’d be afraid to enter a space ship one day. This one, cherry on the cake, is not that big and there’s nowhere to hide, and despite being equipped for fighting it doesn’t look easy to control. 

Despite Poe being a happy-trigger soldier on the ground, he is actually an amazing pilot, and he avoids every ship chasing them with ease, almost playfully. Nien and Pax have taken the controls of the guns, and Jess is seated on the co-pilot seat, fumbling with the coordinates to try and escape as fast as possible. BB rolls around with the spins. Whatever they did, the First Order doesn’t seem to want them destroyed, otherwise their enemies would be much more violent than they are. Ben eventually gets up when he sees they’re not ready to go in hyperspace, and he carefully reaches the commands.

“What have you done?” 

“Who? Us?” Poe absentmindedly replies, too focused on the flying. “Nothing!” 

Ben scoffs and looks at the sky, where the ships look like little dots between the clouds. They’re coming closer, though, trying to encircle their shuttle. Ben takes a few steps back and with a hum he makes a little gesture of his hand. The closest enemy ship loses control and goes flying against another ship. They both explode and Poe avoids the flames with a shout.

“What?! They’re not good pilots!” Poe laughs. 

Ben goes back to his corner of the shuttle.  **I never thought you could do that.** Again, another compliment. Void is getting soft. 

Gaining speed and distance over their attackers, the Resistance goes right for the atmosphere of the planet so they can make the jump. 

As Ben braces for impact… Nothing happens. He raises his head from between his hands, annoyed. “What now??” 

“Nothing good,” Jess says as she presses the buttons of the control panel. “We’ve lost control over the ship. We’re getting beam-tracked.” 

“We’re dead,” Pax says with a matter of fact tone. Nien retorts that they’re not yet. 

But the situation is getting grim. They’re dragged inside a large cargo ship, another facade of the First Order. This time it’s real stormtroopers who storm inside the shuttle, and though the Resistance manages to shoot a few of them they’re quickly overpowered. 

“Drop your weapons!” a trooper shouts at them, and Ben does. Not that he needs any weapon to kill them. 

Eventually the Resistance is getting stripped of their blasters as well, and they’re all handcuffed, much to Void’s outrage and disappointment.  **I hope you have a plan. If not** **_I_ ** **take control and kill everyone.**

“And then what?” Ben asks between his teeth, just a whisper for his host to hear. “We’re stranded in space. The Resistance won’t hesitate to shoot at us, and we’ll be forced to kill them too. Then it’s us alone against hyperspace.” 

That makes Void shut its mouth. At least Ben won that. They’re guided to a cell where they’re carelessly thrown, and before any of them can act the door shuts, and BB is taken away. They all start struggling against the restraints, and Ben loses them easily with the Force. Poe looks at him with wide eyes.

“... How?”

“They weren’t really well attached,” Ben lies. “I’m surprised the Resistance doesn’t know how to get rid of handcuffs.” Nonetheless he helps them. They’re caged, but their hands are free. Again, Ben asks. “What have you done?” 

Poe sighs as he sits against the wall. “We stole intel. Precious intel. Something to turn the war in our favor.” 

“Really?” Now Ben’s genuinely curious. “What is it?”

The soldiers exchange a glance. “No need to hide that now,” Poe says. “It’s the list of the politicians who follow the First Order. A giant hit list of every ally of this newborn wannabe-Empire. So, yeah, pretty important.” 

And now Ben is boiling with rage. “A  _ list _ ?” And he wasn’t aware they had a list of the public figures supporting the First Order? No one told him  _ anything _ ?! To him, an officer of the First Order?? Force be damned, he was one of the most powerful figures of the First Order and no one bothered telling him they had this?? Ben wasn’t even  _ aware  _ they had support in the Senate! Pacing back and forth, breathing loudly to try not to get too angry, Ben is outraged. Who did they think he was??

“... Are you okay, pal?” 

“I AM! I am… Okay.” Ben growls. “Where is this list, now?” 

“Beebee has it. I supposed they would to destroy it… But if they wanted us alive, then I guess they had only one copy of this list, for security reasons. They want it back.” 

“That’s not going to happen,” Ben snarls, “We’re going to--” And then it happens. The cargo enters hyperspace. Ben feels it the  _ second  _ they jump. He doubles over in pain and falls on his knees, curled up in a ball. 

Oh, that hurt.  **We should have eaten before the jump** . And Ben wants to retort that if they hadn’t  _ wasted  _ food the day before they wouldn’t be in this situation, but he simply groans and closes his eyes. He’s going to throw up.

“Are you okay?” Jess asks him, surprised.

“DO I LOOK OKAY TO YOU??” And shouting in a cell in hyperspace isn’t his greatest idea. He groans again and mentally insults Void. Void doesn’t reply, too busy with its own sickness. After his outburst the prison is silent, no one dares talking, and so for a long moment no one tries to find a way out of the cell. 

But silence can’t last forever, and this time it’s Poe, it’s always Poe, who comes closer to Ben to try and talk to him.

“Is that bloodburn?” He carefully asks. 

“What?” Ben raises his head a little too quickly, and everything spins. “No. No, it’s not.” 

“Oh. That’s a relief,” Poe says. “I mean… Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you or call for bad luck. It’s just… I’ve lost someone with this thing and… Is there anything we can do?” 

“No,” Ben says dryly. Then he regrets. “Yes. We have to stop the hyperspace.” He raises his eyes again to look at Poe. He  _ could  _ do this on his own.  **Not going to happen** . But he needs help. “Can you do it?” 

“As soon as we’re out of this cell we’re gonna--” Ben makes a gesture of his hand and the door opens. “--find a way.” Poe gasps. “You’re a Jedi.” 

“Just  _ stop the hyperspace _ .” Ben growls, letting his head fall down against the cold floor of the cell.

There are precipitated footsteps in the hallway, but the Resistance quickly leaves the cell and after a few minutes of struggle Ben can only hear the soldiers of the Resistance running away while charging blasters. Good. He breathes slowly in the silence, waiting for Poe and his soldiers to stop the hyperspace.  **You trust them?**

“More than  _ you  _ trust  _ me _ , obviously,” Ben hisses. Getting on his two feet, he stumbles against the wall to leave the cell. He can’t stay here, the troopers will eventually come back. So he finds a place to hide and tries not to pass out while the ship is still in hyperspace. The alarm is ringing around him, the noise too loud and too awful for his migraine, but he endures and waits. Closing his eyes he looks for the Resistance, but he’s too weakened to find them so he gives up. He decides to keep up his stamina for the upcoming fight, and  _ oh _ the First Order doesn’t know what’s coming for them. He going to rip them apart, tear the flesh and limbs from their bodies and leave them mangled on the ground. If they have time, if  _ Ben  _ has time, he’s going to eat them.  **Brain, eyes, tongue, flesh, Force** . Keeping this idea in his head, Ben fights the sickness as long as he can. And then it’s done. The hyperspace is deactivated, Ben is stable again. He’s strong again. Getting on his two feet, he breathes deeply, and grabs his bag from near the cell. He takes his lightsaber, his blaster, straps the bag on his shoulder before leaving the prison.

The first squadron of troopers he meets wasn’t ready to see him behind a corner, and before they can raise their weapons, Ben decapitates three of them in a single blow of his lightsaber. Recognizing the weapon, the two other troopers start in fear, losing a few precious seconds. Ben throws them against the wall so hard there’s a sinister  _ crack  _ echoing in the helmets. Mh. He has a hard time controlling his Force. Must be the side-effects of the horrible time he just had. Ben decides to go the simpler way, and he drops his lightsaber in his bag and settles for his blaster. And with that he shoots at every trooper he crosses path with, to reach the Resistance in the main deck. Now he can feel them, and see that despite their dire situation they manage to keep surviving really well. Turning in a corridor, Ben goes for the droid with the Force damned list. When he arrives they didn’t destroy it yet, the droid, and a part of Ben is relieved to retrieve the droid unharmed. BB cheers and beeps when it sees him, and Ben freezes everyone in the room with the Force before freeing it. He then kills everyone.  **Can we eat the next ones?** Ben doesn’t know if they can do that. Not with BB near them. This thing could report everything to its friends, and Ben is too weakened in this situation to do anything without the Resistance. So he shakes his head. 

“Patience. You’ll have to wait.”  **We need to eat.** “I  _ know _ , thank you,” Ben growls. “But you’ll have to wait.” 

Following the droid, Ben catches up with the Resistance.

“Hey, you look better!” Poe cheers, shooting at troopers. “Oh, you have beebee! That’s good news! Now we have to leave!” 

“And how do you expect to do that?” Ben asks.

“Our ship is still able to fly,” Jess remarks, speaking loud above the blaster shots. “We’ll have to make a run for it!”

With a cuss, Ben stretches his arms and pushes every enemy in front of them. They all stumble and fall, and by the time they’re up Ben has already killed half of them. He kicks one in the face so hard the helmet bends inside the head of the trooper, and another one he headbutts, this one dying too on the impact. Void laughs loudly in his head, enjoying the feeling of power. One hit after another he leads the resistance in the halls of the cargo ship, and by the time they arrive at the ship Ben is covered in blood, frustrated and hungry. There’s not a lot of troopers to face them anymore, so Poe jumps in the shuttle, frees it from the cargo, and they leave it behind as fast as possible. Nien is hurt on his arm, and Pax will have a serious concussion to look after, but as for the rest… they’re intact. Poe lets escape a nervous laughter and Jess joins him soon, as she sits on the co-pilot seat. 

“Where to, now?” Ben asks dryly, trying to wipe the blood off of his face. Void growls in his mind. 

“Far from here. Sorry, pal, but we need to jump.” 

“What? Wait--” Before he can even move towards the pilot seat, Ben blacks out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is he dead?


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben has been knocked unconscious by the hyperspace, but Void keeps going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a smol chapter for a cute little entity
> 
> Enjoy!

_ His vessel was unconscious even before hitting the ground, but HE kept going. Hunger and hatred keeps him going. Something else, too. Something different. He looks, bystander, as the snacks of the Resistance rush towards his vessel to check on him, make sure he’s alive. For the moment, there’s nothing Void can do for him.  _

_ Void.  _

_ This name is estranged to him, yet it is his. Mortals have weird habits. But he will keep the name for now. At least until Ben wakes up. He has used a lot of their powers to free those things from the First Order. Despite the weakness and hunger he has fought and won. So Void does the best he can to keep this vessel from falling apart, from dying. He keeps the hunger to himself, doesn’t feed on Ben’s Force, because Ben needs it more, at this moment. Maybe Ben’s plan would have worked. But Void prefers to keep control. So he waits. Waits for the hyperspace to stop.  _

_ Eventually it stops, the shuttle is no longer surrounded by dashes of pretty light, but by darkness and the faint glow of a planet. They’re going to the part that is in the light, where the day shines on life. And Void waits again. They land in a sort of base where sentients run around, and by the time the door opens the little droid rolls out of the shuttle with beeps and chirps. He’s followed by the others, and two men Void doesn’t know arrive to help get his vessel out of the ship. _

“What happened?” _ the voice of a woman says.  _

_ It’s Poe, the snack who smiled the most at Ben, who replies with a rushed tone. _

“He helped us escape, ma’am, he’s a Jedi! A Jedi!”

_ But before he can hear the reply, Void sees they are taken away, sent further into the base.  _

_ Life vibrates around them. The Force vibrates around them. Animals, bugs, plants, humans, life, and Void reaches for the Force and drinks the delicate flows of Force only he can see. It’s not enough, but it keeps him going. It gives him strength, so he can take control of his vessel and then eat the Force, eat the place. Until they are invincible again. Then they can destroy the First Order, then they can destroy the galaxy.  _

_ Ben still doesn’t wake up. It’s concerning, and Void hopes his vessel hasn’t been too damaged by the hyperspace. But he keeps checking and checking and there’s no injury to heal, no bone to fix. If he is broken, then Void will make blood rain on this planet. For the moment he lets them be dragged away, obviously to a place where mortals heal their friends. At first it doesn’t seem like a bad idea but the stupid female snack with the white jacket takes a NEEDLE and Void doesn’t want her to get too close to his vessel. So when she arrives to stick the needle in Ben’s skin Void doesn’t let her. He covers their body with his own matter and the needle breaks against the scales. At first the female shouts in surprise, but quickly she can’t do any more sound as Void strangles her with one hand.  _

_ “ _ **You keep this away from us,** _ ” he warns her, getting up from the not comfy bed they placed them on.  _

_ She doesn’t touch the ground when he stands, and he drags her closer to sniff her. She doesn’t have a lot of Force, but that will do. That will renew their energy, that will allow Ben to heal. With one powerful bite he rips the female’s head out of her shoulders, and he chews slowly to enjoy the cracks of the bones in his mouth. It’s been weeks since he tasted sentient flesh. Weeks. They will all pay for this.  _

_ A series of blast hurt his skin with fire and, annoyed, he throws them the headless body to make them stop. He then jumps at them to rip the flesh out of one’s throat and eviscerate another with one powerful strike of his clawed hands. There’s blood everywhere on the white walls now.  _

_ “ _ **It looks like they’re not much of a fight. Were you really thinking they can help against the First Order?** ”  _ Void asks. But he has no reply, and he feels alone. This angers him. He steps on the bodies to leave the white room and wanders in the hallways, looking for the Force.  _

_ There is someone strong with the Force here. In this place. But where? Following the feeling, Void now runs in the hallway, pushing aside every soldier who tries to stop him, not caring if they are dead or alive. They are snacks but there is a treat not far from him. He just needs to find it.  _

_ Eventually he stops in the middle of the base, outside where he can breathe nature and the Force around. Their trip in the forest was welcome after eons of being trapped in a metal box, and days after in the sour oxygen of the ships. Then he sees it. His treat, his snack, his precious life-force. She’s an old lady, really really really small. Again, a lot of humans are small, and Void rejoices that Ben isn’t one of those small humans. But… this one is really small. Nonetheless Void isn’t stupid. In her eyes shine the power of the Force, but also anger, sadness. Grief. Why is the old lady sad? What is she grieving? Hunger is stronger than all these odd questions, and Void pushes aside all the soldiers who try to protect the lady. Even Poe, who’s not smiling anymore, is in the middle, and Void hesitates before sending him flying in the air with a strike. Ben liked him. If he’s not dead, then Void will grace him with a quick snack-death. Now that no one’s in the way, Void jumps at the old lady. He’s going to empty her head like a can soup--  _ PLEASE DON’T  _ Ben’s voice echoes in his head.  _

“Ben,”  _ The old lady says with a firm voice, not even flinching despite the giant thing jumping at her. _

_ And just with that, Void can’t move anymore. He feels Ben pulling away from the old lady, preventing Void from reaching his precious snack.  _

_ “ _ **What do you think you’re doing?!** _ ” Void roars at Ben, and at the lady who shows no fear.  _

YOU CAN’T KILL HER, VOID! “ **Oh, really?! And WHY NOT?** ” SHE IS MY MOTHER, I AM BEGGING YOU, DON’T!! 

_ His mother. His vessel’s mother, Ben’s mother. The really old really small lady with fire in her eyes, is Ben’s mother. Void stops pushing against Ben and stands in front of the lady. He crouches to look at her better, his tongue out and tasting the air around them both, almost licking the Force in the air. The lady looks down at him, unafraid. Nobody dares moving around them. Yet she remains untouched. Void doesn’t like this. He is supposed to make people quiver in fear by his mere presence. _

“ **Ben’s mother** ,”  _ Void repeats, slowly, tasting the words. He never met the parents of his vessels before. And the love Ben has for this woman is almost overwhelming. Now his vessel is completely awake, and Void can feel his emotions. Love, fear, shame, grief. And a part of Void, the one the most in symbiosis with Ben, somewhat feels the same. It is in the Force around them, after all. “ _ **Mother** _ ,” he repeats again.  _

“Give me my son back,”  _ The little lady says, no, she commands him. Void snarls but she’s not even stepping back.  _ “I’m not bargaining.” 

PLEASE DON’T HURT HER _ , Ben’s voice echoes again, and Void never heard him so desperate. Ben never begged. He does, now. This is unsettling.  _

_ Still crouched near her, Void looks left and right, makes sure nobody is ready to shoot at them. He can’t lose his vessel now, he just got him back.  _

_ “ _ **Are you strong enough to stand?** _ ” Void asks aloud. The old lady raises an eyebrow, but the question wasn’t for her.  _ YES _ , Ben replies.  _ I AM. “ **This one, I will yield. This one only. But don’t forget.** ” WE WILL LEAVE THIS PLACE ALIVE, VOID. YOU HAVE MY WORD. 

_ Even if he didn’t want to, Void can’t refuse and kill the lady. Ben’s emotions are too strong. The old lady will live. He has played enough for the moment, and Ben owes him one now. So he yields indeed, and retreats back into his vessel, letting him regain his human form. He leaves the situation to Ben, who’s kneeling on the ground in front of his mother, and he hears his vessel choke back his tears. _

“Mother…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leia's alive! =D   
> I love Leia and I love Luke and even if they did some mistakes regarding Ben Solo I love them and I know they only have good intention in their hearts. I'm sad over Leia and Luke bashed in some fanfictions, so I'm going to make this extra happy. For myself and my little heart.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben is trapped in the heart of the Resistance's base, and Void is hungry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess what day it is today ! =D It's Star Wars time!   
> I'm going to see the movie tonight, I'm sooo excited about that!   
> That deserves a chapter.  
> Enjoy!

It doesn’t take long for Ben to be arrested; as soon as he regains complete human form there’s soldiers all around him, all armed and distressed and ready to shoot him. The hunger has only slightly dimmed but Void stays scarce, just as he said. 

Ignoring the weapons aimed at him, Ben keeps staring at his mother from his kneeling position. He remembers when he was just a child, small and scared, and he would look up at her and her down at him while telling him she would return home soon. Just a quick trip that would in the end last several weeks. 

“HANDS UP!!” Poe shouts, running at them with his blaster in hands. Blood runs down his face from a cut on his forehead, where Void’s claws met the tender skin. 

Ben raises his hands, his eyes still locked on Leia. Her face is unreadable. She raises a hand but stops merely centimeters away from her son’s face, then she decides against it. Leia steps back, letting her soldiers surround Ben. In instants he’s shackled, though he and Poe both know it’s useless. 

“Be gentle with him,” Leia eventually says, “He won’t be any trouble anymore.” Her tone doesn’t suffer any retort from Ben. He knows it, he knows her. 

“Ma’am,” Poe starts, still holding the shackles, “with all due respect, this son of a bitch killed--” 

“I know what he did,  _ Captain _ ,” Leia interrupts him firmly. Somewhat she seems less outraged than Ben by the insult. “Do I have to repeat myself?” 

“... No, General.” 

“Good.” And she lets them take Ben away, and he lets them too. 

 

They walk between the half buried buildings of the Resistance in silence, and everyone look at them. If Poe shows nothing more than anger and frustration and disgust, Ben keeps his head low and tries not to be too visible. He doesn’t even know what he has done, and he’s afraid of that, afraid of what Void has done. 

That’s not how he hoped to see his mother again. Truth be told, he never hoped to see his mother again. Not after Hosnian Prime… 

“Stop there,” Poe snarls. 

Ben stops and looks up to see where they are. To his surprise, this looks like a regular prison, regular cells with regular walls, and for a moment he wonders if Poe’s joking. 

Jess seems to wonders the same thing.

“Poe,” she says, “That…  _ won’t do _ . We can’t… He’s going to escape in seconds.” 

“Well, you have a better idea?” Poe asks, opening the door of the cell. “Because I don’t. We’re not equipped to deal with  _ this _ . Jedi, monsters… We’re not.” Without bothering releasing Ben from his shackles, Poe pushes him in the cell. “But he won’t be any trouble anymore. Right?” 

Ben doesn’t answer. Instead he lets the cuffs fall on the ground, and he goes to sit against the wall of the prison. Poe looks at him do with a frown, and he then closes the door without locking it. That’s pointless. After another warning to the two guards of the cell and the order to let him know if something happens, Poe and Jess leave the place, letting Ben with the two soldiers who shake in their boots. 

Great. Fantastic. 

“What happened?” He asks Void, angry and a little lost. He has no memory of the moment.  **We may have eaten a lady. And killed a few soldiers. It was self-defense, they were shooting at us.** “You  _ ate  _ a member of the Resistance??”  **AGAIN, Hyperspace can’t be brushed off with nothing to eat!! We need food, I take food! She wasn’t even that good.** “Void.”  **What?** “...” 

Ben groans and hits the wall with the back of his head, making the two soldiers jump in fear. 

For a moment he was so scared for his mother. He almost-- They almost… He couldn’t have lived with the idea of having  _ eaten  _ Leia. But they didn’t. Void is angry, they are hungry and stuck on this planet and everyone hates them and fears them and his cover is blown up because  _ Leia _ knows all of his deeds, both of his names. But at least they didn’t eat Leia. He owes Void that. Ben’s not a fool; if Void wanted to kill Leia, she’d be dead.  **But what now? We won’t stay here. We won’t play the “I’m sorry” game and I’m too hungry to wait for your precious Resistance to forget or forgive.**

“Yeah, and that won’t happen. They’re understaffed, desperate, without any official help, and they won’t forget nor forgive that we killed some of their brothers-at-arm. It’s just a matter of time before Leia spills the beans and I’m also under arrest for… you know.” 

Ben throws a glance at the two soldiers. They’re listening to him with confusion. Ben sighs. Void growls.  **I’m hungry.**

“I know,” Ben replies. “I know, just… Give me a second. I’m going to find something.”

After two litteral seconds Void asks again.  **Have you found something yet?**

“ _ No, _ ” Ben groans.  **You said a second! It’s more than a second!** “It’s an expression, Void! Give me a  _ minute _ , alright?” And he searches and searches for a solution, but there’s nothing coming to mind. He’s stranded on a planet with the Resistance against which they struck a murderous attack. He really doesn’t know what could smooth the situation enough for him to at least get out of the prison the easy way.  **Oh! I have an idea!** Void suddenly shouts a little too loudly. Ben cringes and shakes his head a little. 

“Really? And what is it? Your idea?”  **I could** **_eat you_ ** **, and that way we will regain strength eventually, but more important it will call on the humans’ natural empathy and they will want to help you!** “I don’t think that can work…”  **Well, your** **_mother_ ** **won’t let you die in a cell, mothers don’t do that. Mothers are caring and helpful.** “This one isn’t,” Ben bites back with bitterness. “Trust me, this isn’t a good idea.” 

Ben gets up and paces back and forth in the cell. Leaving now would anger the Resistance even more, especially if they learn he left to hunt and kill and eat things.  **At least my idea is faster to put in place** . Void is now beginning to be obnoxious. It just wants to  _ eat _ , Ben knows. Whatever happens next is abstract for it. Or maybe… Maybe Void suffers from hunger way more than Ben can feel it. Maybe this one they don’t completely share, and while Ben is hungry, Void is starving. Would eating him help it? Or is it just pay back for having prevented it to eat Leia? 

“Would it help you, to do that? Wouldn’t that kill me faster?”  **Whatever agony you’d feel, it wouldn’t kill you. I told you that already. You would recover from it faster and better than any other vessel I’ve had.** “ _ Agony? _ ”  **This is just a word. That would sting a little, yes. And after that, once the hunger has dimmed for me, then you can take your time to get us out of there. You owe me that. If it wasn’t for you we would be out of this planet already.**

Ben weights his choices. He then looks at the two soldiers still staring at him. They haven’t moved, but they look terribly afraid. They probably didn’t want to be there. Ben doesn’t know what to do. Should he talk to them? Feed a conversation they all doesn’t want to have? 

“Hi,” Ben tries. “I know we haven’t met under the best circumstances, but I assure you that I have nothing against you. Or the Resistance, for that matter. I am sorry for what happened.” They don’t reply. “May I have an audience with Leia Organa? Please?” Again, no answer. “Fine. Suit yourself.” 

**They don’t want to talk to you** , Void smartly points out. Ben sighs. As if he didn’t notice that. If they don’t want to talk that leaves him little options to get out without killing and eating everybody. And the easiest one is… Void’s idea.  **Does this mean you’re in?**

“Wait wait. I don’t… I’m still trying to figure out if this is a good idea.” **It is!** “Of course you’d say that.” **… You know what is going to happen** **if you don’t find a solution real quick? I am going to fall into the same state as the one you found me in on that blasted planet where the Jedi left me. And** ** _this_** **, this is going to be far worse for you. For us both.**

Ben actually thinks about that. He remembers, it was the worst day of his life. Well…  _ One  _ of the worst. And Void was less responsive than today, talking only about food. It wasn’t even a symbiosis, more like a parasite. 

Ben absolutely doesn’t want to re-live this. No. No thank you. Nu-uh. No. 

“Alright what are my options?” Ben asks Void, ready to listen to his plan.  **Well. You don’t have a lot of options. But hear my plan. I eat you, you survive, we get out.** “That sounds awfully simple.”  **BECAUSE IT IS!!**

Ben’s ears ring for a few seconds, and he sits down against the wall and rubs his temples with a wince. “Don’t yell,” he sighs. “What I simply meant was, then what? That’s not going to help us get out of this situation, of this planet. If anything  _ this  _ is going to delay our departure.”  **Oh, don’t worry, we can’t delay it more. So, you’re in?** “I guess, but that’s not the--” 

If Ben has already experienced pain before, this was  _ nothing  _ compared to the sudden agony that takes over his whole body in seconds. This is not even feeling like death, death sounds sweet next to that. Ben falls on the ground and curls up with a deafening scream, and he must have passed out but only for a second as pain prevents him from even  _ losing conscience _ . The two guards have entered the cell, but Ben can’t understand what they’re saying, can’t hear them under his own screams. Eventually his cries of pain become gurgles as he chokes on blood and saliva and the black goo that pours out of his mouth. He can’t know how long he endures this. Could be minutes, could be hours, time is out of his grasp. Reality is, too, and at some point he’s not sure he’s  _ sane  _ anymore, because there is no way Leia Organa appears before his eyes, and kneels next to him to put his head on her lap. Ben looks at her in confusion as she strokes his face, spreading black all over her hand and his cheeks.

“It’s alright,” she says. “Breathe.”

Ben opens his mouth to breathe, but that only makes more goo spill out of him. This time it has a mind of its own as it covers Ben’s entire face, and for a moment he can’t see anything and do nothing but focus on the pain  _ increasing _ . He feels himself getting pulled away from Leia, and he briefly panics until he hears Void’s voice growling out loud. 

“ **You are to stay away, woman! I have been merciful once, do** **_not_ ** **push your luck.”**

“You are  _ obviously  _ killing him!” Leia retorts.

“ **Mind your own business!** ” 

The pain dims. Finally it dims. It’s still here, Ben still hurts, but the agony is gone. All of Ben’s nerves are on fire and if he had his own appearance he would probably be shaking like a leaf under the wind. For the moment Void keeps control, and the tell-tale offset of the matter of their arms tells him it has found its favorite appearance. Void stares at Leia from under the hood of its cloak, daring her to approach. In the cell there’s also Jess and Poe, and all of the other soldiers are aiming at them from the outside. Void looks at them one by one, every time it turns its head there’s a faint whistle escaping from its matter as it strains under the movements. 

“ **You can try to stop me and lose the few precious soldiers you have left, or surrender now and get out of the way. What will it be, General Organa?** ” 

Leia looks at him without blinking. Since no answer comes from her, Void loses its patience. Ben still hurts, and he  _ really  _ doesn’t want this staring contest to last too long. 

“ **Let’s play a game. I get out, and you get to chase me. No ship, no radar, no army, just you, and maybe one or two soldiers of your choice. I let you enjoy the thrill to be the hunter, for once, and I accept to lower my level to one of a prey.** ” 

“What happens when I track you down and catch you?” 

“ **We both know you won’t have the** ** _balls_** **to do what you must. It is the way it is.** **So we will play with some rules. If you manage to track me down before nightfall, and I repeat no radar no starfighter, I will answer honestly** ** _one_** **of your questions. Fail to do that and I will leave this planet without leaving you** ** _anything_** **, and you will lose your** ** _precious one_** **once again, this time with no guarantee you will see him again.** ” 

“Very well,” Leia replies. It took her less than a minute to make her choice. Void laughs.

“ **You mortals are so predictable. Remember, you have until nightfall. A light transport on the ground. If someone else than one soldier of your choice plays with you it’s over.** ” 

“I thought I had two soldiers.”

“ **I changed my mind.** ”

“We haven’t started playing and you are already unfair,” Leia retorts. 

**“It’s my game, my rules. If you don’t like it I can decide to leave now, and destroy the entire building before doing so. Would you prefer this? Of course you don’t. So shut up and play.”**

Leia looks around with a huff. Poe turns to her, his gun still on Void. 

“Are you sure, General?”

“What choice do we have? It’s  _ here _ , it’s not as if we could do anything. So, yes, we’ll play along.” She turns to Void. “What is your name?” 

“ **You can call me** **_Void_ ** **.** ” 

Leia acknowledges the name with a simple bow of her head before asking her soldiers to move out of the way. They do, they all do, even Poe despite his reluctance. They move out of the way to the door, and Void bolts out of the prison to flee through the woods outside the camp. Ben isn’t sure of how it’s going to happen. Even if Leia doesn’t find them in time, how are they going to escape? They would need help or a copious amount of food. Or both. Actually, both. And then, to go where? Back to a backwater planet where they can hide? Or is it too late to lay low and they will have to move forwards with their plans sooner than expected?

“ **You are thinking too much** ,” Void says with a huff. “ **We are out and we didn’t even hurt one of your precious resistance soldiers, isn’t that what you wanted? And this little adventure helped us learn something important.** ”  _ OH REALLY? _ Ben asks.  _ AND WHAT? _ “ **You survived me eating your internal organs and your connexion to the Force with** **_panache_ ** **!** ”  _ I WOULDN’T SAY THAT… _

Void laughs a little as he grows wings out of his back, and the things are so big they hit the trees around them, leaving smears of goo on the bark. Void stretches and jumps high, spreading his wings to catch the wind. He flies further away from the Resistance, cheating his way out of his own game. There’s four hours of sun left, probably less, but Ben can feel Void’s mind isn’t on  _ escaping _ . He’s looking for food again. As usual. This isn’t a good idea, but Ben is way too weakened to even try to stop it from doing anything. 

“ **Don’t pout. I’m looking for food for you!** **If you don’t eat you will recover slower, and we don’t want that.”** _HOW THOUGHTFUL_. “ **You are** ** _always_** **complaining.** ” _FOR ONCE_ _YOU DON’T, SOMEONE HAS TO_.

For a moment Ben stops talking. He simply looks around as Void dives under the crown of the trees to stay hidden from view, and it retracts its wings to land safely on the ground using its cape as a parachute. The transformations aren’t pleasant, but everytime it hurts a little less. Not that Void minds, it probably doesn’t feel a single thing and is too happy with its favorite appearance. Eventually, after having been picky on his choices, Void settles for a herd of deer-like creatures grazing on a large clearance in the middle of the planet’s largest forest. Graceful and delicate, they seem unaware of Void’s presence.

“ **Mmmmh…. What do you think?** ”  _ I THINK THEY’RE NOT FORCE-SENSITIVE.  _ “ **So do I. But I like how they look. They are so pretty, they must taste good. Right?** ”  _ I DON’T KNOW… PROBABLY. _ “ **Okay so if we eat the whole pack we can actually draw enough Force from them!** ”  _ THE WHOLE HERD?? _ “ **Yes! Think! It will be like a giant buffet! A mighty feast! Food! Food for the whole day, the whole week!** ” 

The way Void gets over excited for food, hopping up and down like a giant and terrifying child, has Ben surrendering rather fast. And it can’t be bad for him to actually digest something other than himself. If anything, he may regain enough strength to have the control of his body back. 

Void grows in size again, staying silent and trying not to be spotted by the herd. It doesn’t want to run too much after them. And if it wants to catch them all at once, they have to stay still. Void transfers all of its newly gained matter in its cape, and it inflates it like a giant wing behind its back. Spikes appear in the cape, and they suddenly fly towards the herd like deadly darts, too fast for the animals to react. The first one falls on the ground with a pained cry, along with a dozen of its own. Void bolts out of its hide-out to catch the others before they can flee out of the clearance. Jumping from one to the other, stabbing them with precise strikes, it hurts them all without killing a single one. And once the clearance is sprinkled with agonizing animals, finally Voids stops. 

“ **Can you hear that? It’s the song of mortal creatures dying!** ”  _ YES, I CAN HEAR THAT. CAN YOU STOP PLAYING? _ “ **You are not fun.** ” 

Grabbing the closest animal by its leg, Void opens its mouth like a serpent with too much teeth to swallow its prey entirely.  _ EW _ . Once the first one has disappeared, Void decides to be a little more picky on its food and starts dissecting the others to look for the better parts. One by one it drags them in the middle of the clearance to open them and search inside. There’s blood  _ everywhere _ and it doesn’t seem to bother Void, as it ignores both the mess and the faint cries of the deer-like creatures. It goes on for hours, as the sun slowly sets behind the trees, announcing the last minutes of the game. In a quarter of hours it will be over. 

“Hands up,” Leia’s voice echoes as she enters the clearance. She stops her light speeder and jumps down from it, quickly followed by Poe. “The game is over.” 

Void opens its large mouth to show a smile with too much too sharp teeth, and as it gets its tongue out to lick the blood from its face a small slice of flesh falls on the ground. It’s seated in a pile of mangled corpses, looking down at the two humans. Poe’s face scrunches up in disgust, but Leia stays simply unphased. 

“ **You are more resourceful than I thought. Did you use the Force? Of course you did.** ” It laughs a little. “ **But since I am in a good mood I will grant you this win. You deserve it, after all.** ” 

“It would have been a shame for  _ you  _ if you didn’t play by your own rules.” Leia says, her blaster in hands. 

“ **You think a lot of yourself,** **_mother_ ** **. Anyway. As promised, you can ask one question. Only one. Choose it well.** ” 

“Will you answer it honestly?” Leia asks. 

“ **No,** ” Void replies. “ **But he will.** ” 

And just like that it lets place to Ben who sinks a little in the pile of corpses, taken aback by the sudden change. The pain comes back, but only faintly, and he’s dizzy and bloody.

Leia lowers her gun and her eyes widen, then she frowns at the situation. Poe stays still, looks around, he looks confused but doesn’t say a word. 

Ben clears his throat, spits blood on the pile of corpses he’s, for the moment, stuck in. “I guess you still have a question to ask,” he then says, uneasy. 

And in Leia’s eyes, there’s a thousand questions. So many, they threaten to spill out uncontrollably. But Leia isn’t uncontrollable. So she keeps all of her questions to herself, gulps, and decides for one question. Only one.

“Are you for or against the First Order?” 

Ben stares at her for a moment, almost… disappointed by the question. But she’s Leia Organa. The war goes before anything else. He keeps his end of Void’s deal.

“Against.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You know what's better than hunting things? Eating things!"   
> -Void, 2k19, probably.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben is arrested by the Resistance, again, but this time he's able to confront his mother. And other things...

Ben is dragged into a unfurnished room with only a table and two chairs. An interrogation room. Leia enters after him and closes the door behind her. Ben shifts uneasily from one leg to another, blind to his surroundings and it unnerves him. He doesn’t have the Force. Well… Yes, he _has_ it, but… He’s cut from it. Void has eaten his connexion to the Force, and Ben doesn’t know how long it’s going to take to have it back. Though Void is adamant it won’t take long, Ben doesn’t know what to think of it. 

Leia looks at him in silence for a moment before finding her voice again.

“I will be honest with you. I don’t know if I have to be relieved or angry and afraid. Though the latter seems the most appropriate, I will grace you with the benefit of the doubt. But that’s all I can do. For the moment you are under arrest for… My boy, for a lot of things.” 

“They don’t know who I am,” Ben dryly retorts. That he knows. He knows Leia would never drag her name in the mud, more than it had been already, by saying her son is under the mask of Kylo Ren. “Apart from what happened at the infirmary, what am I under arrest for?” 

Leia walks to one of the chairs and sits. She gestures at her son to do the same. He does. 

“I’m not a fool, Ben. _I_ know who you are. I know what you have done. My heart aches, thinking of that.” She stares at him, piercing every shield he can raise. “But you’re here. You helped Captain Dameron and his squadron, retrieved the intel and destroyed a ship of the First Order. You told me you are now against the First Order? I… I am confused. And _this_?” She leans back against the chair. “What happened?” 

“It’s…” Ben licks his lips, looking for words. He doesn’t know what to tell her. Or even if it would be enough. True, he left the First Order, but not for the right reasons. And nothing will erase what he has done. “It’s complicated,” he eventually says. 

“Doesn’t look _that_ complicated to me,” Leia retorts. “You changed into a giant monster with a mind of its own and killed everyone in your way to reach me. Potentially kill me.”

“It wasn’t _me_ . You told it yourself, it has a mind of its own.” **Watch your words**. “It’s the reason I left the First Order. I couldn’t… They would’ve killed me, if they knew what I had become.” He decides it’s enough answers for the moment. She doesn’t need to know the rest of his motives.

“So, you truly left.” 

“Yes.” 

Silence settles between them, heavy.

“What is it?” Leia eventually asks. 

“A--A symbiote.” And that’s all he can tell. He knows Void is secretive. “It… lives inside me. It can take control, we can talk, it’s complicated,” he then repeats. 

“It ate our soldiers.”

“I’m sorry.” Ben has flashbacks from his first ‘accident’, with the dogs. His scolding by Snoke. He shivers. 

Leia stares at him again, looking for answers on his face instead of his words. Her hard expression softens. 

“I know you are.” She gets up and walks around the table to reach him. She seems to hesitate for a moment. “What happened at the temple?”

“Luke didn’t tell you?” Ben asks, surprised. So she has no idea?

“Luke never told me anything. He disappeared without a word. But let’s not talk about that. I won’t give you intel on Resistance whereabouts, not right now. What happened at the temple?” She repeats. 

Ben opens his mouth to talk, but he can’t speak, can’t find the right words. Can he tell her mother than Luke Skywalker, her own twin brother, tried to assassinate him in his sleep? Hasn’t she suffered enough? **She has to know. Luke Skywalker is not going to be helped by his sister.**

“I don’t know if… I can’t… **Lu** ke Sky **walk** er **trie** d **to m** urder **me. Th** e temp **le got** des **troye** d wh **en I** \--” And Ben stops talking, his eyes wide. “Oh no… _Void_ !” **What?!**  

Ben gets up when Leia takes a step back. “Mother, please, listen to me. It’s not.. It wasn’t-- Yes. It’s true. Luke tried to kill me.” 

“That... sounds impossible,” Leia says with stubborness. “Luke can’t--” 

“He did, I’m sorry. He drew his lightsaber, he was ready to strike. I got so… _angry_. I let myself be swallowed by the dark. But. It’s true.”

Ben reaches for his mother’s hand, but she doesn’t let him. She goes for the door, stops but doesn’t look at him. 

“I need time to think. I’ll be right back.”

“Mother, _please_.” 

Leia leaves the room and closes behind her. For a moment, Ben looks at the door as she walks away, almost running, from him. **She needed to know. You hiding this won’t help anybody.** With rage, Ben throws the chair at the wall and kicks the table until it falls apart. Blind from the Force, he turns around and looks at the walls, almost afraid, _severed_ from one of his senses, and he screams from the top of his lungs. 

 

Hours pass before someone enters the room he stays in. He has found himself magnanimous enough not to vent his anger on his mother’s soldiers, but her reaction is still a burning pain. He should have known she wasn’t happy to see him. She’s waiting for her _son_ , her real son, hoping to go back in time before all this mess happened. This Ben is not her Ben. And so he’s left heartbroken again. Void repeats that they can kill everybody, leave nothing but corpses for the First Order to find, but Ben doesn’t want to. He wants to be left alone, he wants to sulk in peace and get comfortable in the hurtful idea that his mother doesn’t love him as much as he loves her. 

Judging by the heavy footsteps of the boots, Ben guesses it’s not Leia who came back as promised, so he doesn’t bother raising his head to acknowledge the newcomer. If he had the Force he would have known but… His other senses aren’t as sharp. 

Poe’s voice echoes in the room, answering his questions.

“You made her cry,” he points out accusingly.

Ben huffs. “I told you not to trust anyone. I warned you, in the forest, yet you didn’t listen. Look at you now.” He doesn’t even raise his head. There’s no venom in his voice. 

“What are you?” Poe asks, and to his credit his voice only trembles a little. 

“This is none of your concern,” Ben retorts, still seated on the ground. Why won’t Poe give up already?

“This is!” Poe then shouts. He doesn’t come closer, instead he raises his weapon. “I brought you _here_ ! I trusted you! They died because of me! So this concerns me!! So answer me, Force damn it! _What_ are you?!” 

“I am sorry!” Ben storms. He gets up and Poe instinctively steps back, unlocking the security of his blaster. “I’m sorry your friends died, I’m sorry you feel guilty about this! I’m sorry you felt like you could trust the entire galaxy and I ruined this for you, and I’m sorry I made her cry!! You want to shoot me?! Then DO IT!” And Ben spreads his arms to dare Poe. “You think it’ll make you feel better? What, you think that once you--when you give up to anger and _vengeance_ , all of your problems will go away? That it’ll pass and you will be a shiny little human again?!” His voice rises at every word, and soon he’s roaring at Poe who’s petrified, his gun still in the air, aiming at Ben’s face. “Once you fall down that path it will _never_ let you escape!” They stare at each other, Ben trying to understand the human in front of him without the Force. The _Force_ . Ben lets his arms fall to his side like dead weights. “But you’ve been down already, haven’t you? It always has been easier for you, Force-blind people. You don’t get _dragged_ down.” He stops talking, looks at Poe better, moves closer to him until the barrel of the blaster rests on the crook of his neck. “How can you be so full of anger, yet so vibrant with light? What motivates your hate?”

Poe stays silent, frozen on the spot, his heavy breathing the sole proof he’s still alive. There’s so many things, so many thoughts going through these eyes, through this head, but Ben has access to none of it. It drives him crazy. Frustrated, Ben takes a step back, his hand on the canon of the blaster. The memory of their first encounter, Poe hurt and anxious and Ben awkward and covered in blood and gore, still lingers in his mind. Poe and his friends were so… ill-at-ease. As much as he was. But Poe kept trying to talk to him. He kept trying to trust him, so he could save his friends, his crew, from dire fate. And that’s it. Ben can see why Poe isn’t like him, why he would never turn to the Dark Side. He hates selflessly. He fears for others. **He doesn’t have the Force.**

“Have you talked to her?” Ben suddenly asks Poe who startles in surprise.

“What?”

“Leia. Have you talked to her?” 

“... No,” the soldier eventually replies. “I wanted to, but… Something big came up and she was forced to go and see what was happening. She was angry, I could see that from afar. Nothing else.”

“What happened?” 

“Nice try, not gonna tell you anything.” 

Ben sighs and turns his back to Poe, not at all bothered by the blaster aiming at his head. **It has been fun. Now it’s not anymore. We have to leave.** And Ben knows Void is right. They can’t stay in prison until the Resistance decides otherwise. Especially if Leia doesn’t even want to speak to him. And Void said it itself; never mind how many deers they ate, that won’t be enough. And if Void is optimistic, Ben knows they won’t last an entire week with this little Force between them. As long as Ben doesn’t have the Force he can’t help Void, and if Void is hungry then… 

“I have to go,” he simply says, and he hears Poe’s grip on his weapon tightens. “I will leave you alone, you won’t see me again.” 

“I trusted you once. I can’t do that again. You’re going to kill people, you’re going to slaughter innocents as soon as we let you go.” 

“You really think you can keep me from going? You?” There’s challenge in Ben’s eyes, when he turns around to stare at Poe.

“No, I’m not stupid. I saw the way you opened doors in the cargo. I was there to see you fight. But I also know you can’t get into hyperspace without collapsing. Consider this planet your giant prison.” 

Threats, then. Guided by Void’s anger and his own desperation at the idea of being stranded here, so close to everything he ran from, Ben plunges on Poe like a bird of prey, so fast Poe doesn’t have the time to react. The soldier’s head hits the wall hard, and he’s stuck between the stone and Ben’s taller frame. Now there’s fear all around them, and the blaster between them, still aiming at Ben’s chin, visibly trembles. 

“Why are you doing this?” Ben growls, towering above Poe. “What sort of game are you playing? You _know_ you’ll lose, I can feel it.” He tilts his head on the side, and Poe closes his eyes. “You feel it too. You’re pushing the limits, playing with them. You have so many questions, so little courage to ask them.” His voice drops to a whisper. “Here’s the first one: Why is Leia Organa so overprotective over a murderous monster?”

“Step back, or I blow your head off.” Poe retorts back, the tremors of fear and anger in his voice. 

 **Don’t--** “Do it,” Ben says. “Free me from this place, or free me from this life.” **Don’t!**

Poe opens his eyes in surprise at Ben’s suicidal taunt. Void has fallen silent once again, but the crawls are strong. Not preoccupied by the feeling, Ben has his eyes locked on Poe’s, he can almost taste the emotions in the air, he doesn’t need the Force for that. Poe frowns, his eyes going from Ben’s eyes to his chin to his lips to his eyes again. The height difference is obvious. 

“What are you?” Poe asks again. 

“Does it matter?” Ben replies absentmindedly, his attention focused on Poe’s eyes. **Be careful** , Void warns. But there’s so much light, he feels attracted like a moth to a flame. He’s not sure whether he wants to steal this light, or crush it out of jealousy. **This snack right there is dangerous for us. We should kill him before the worst happens.**

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Ben asks Void aloud. 

 **You being a little** **_too much_ ** **attracted.** Void replies.

“Me blowing your head off,” Poe says, oblivious of the fact that the question wasn’t for him. 

Ben chuckles. “A lot of words, not a lot of actions.” **If he actually shoots you’re in fault.**

It’s Poe’s turn to growl, his brows furrowed and his blaster still in place despite the shaking. “I won’t be intimidated by you.” 

Just before Ben can reply, Leia enters the room in a fury, a weapon in her hand.

“Ben, step away!” 

And Poe actually jumps out of his skin in surprise… and shoots out of reflex. 

Ben _feels_ the lower half of his face explode on the impact of the blast before Void can even react. If at first it simply tingles, it becomes burning cold really fast up to the roof of his mouth. And several things happen at once. Ben can feel the roof of his mouth becoming as hard as durasteel to protect his brain, but it’s not his doing, it’s Void’s. He knows this, because his main concern is moving his arms in front of Poe’s face to protect him from the explosion. The blast hits the hardened skin of Ben’s mouth and makes ricochets everywhere in what’s left of his cheeks and out of the mingled flesh of his face. The skin and muscles of his forearms are torn on the impact, but Poe is _unharmed_. He’s shaking, covered in blood, he has dropped the blaster, but he’s fine. Leia screams something else, but Ben can’t hear because of the permanent ringing in his ears and the disgusting gurgle escaping what remains of his throat. Slowly, as Void recomposes his muscles and flesh, he moves his arms from Poe’s face to make sure he has nothing. 

“Are you alright?” Is the first question that escapes Ben’s mouth as soon as he has an actual mouth again.

Poe opens and closes his mouth. “... You…”

 **YOU IDIOT!!** Void thunders. **What were you thinking?? What game were you playing!!** And Ben flies until his back hits the other side of the room, really _really_ far from Poe and Leia who’s still frozen on the spot near the door. Ben falls on the ground with a grunt and spits blood. **If it wasn’t for my** **_AMAZING_ ** **reflexes I would have to take** **_days_ ** **to reconstruct all this MESS inside your head! Mortals are unbelievable!! WE HAVE TO LEAVE THIS PLACE!! Or I will eat EVERYONE HERE, including dear old** **_mom_ ** **!** “Wait--” Ben tries, but he’s interrupted again. **If you can stop thinking with the lower half of your body for ONE SECOND and find a way out, then you can talk. But for the moment… SHUT UP!**

Void is talking too loud, the crawls are almost unbearable, and the feeling is just like the one when they argued in the Finalizer, before Ben decided to leave. It’s like his organs are being crushed again. But he has been politely asked to say nothing, so he doesn’t retort a single thing and waits for Void’s anger to pass. When he wants to gets up, Ben realizes he simply can’t, he’s in too much pain and, okay, maybe Void is actually eating on his connection to the Force _again_ and maybe his actual organs to vent out its frustration. Ben breathes in and out, trying to withstand the pain. 

“It’s fine, we’re all fine, it was an accident, no one’s hurt,” Ben tries to soothe the symbiote. He keeps his voice low, both not to anger Void more and to hide the shaking in his voice because of the pain. “I’m sorry.” **I hope you are. You owe me your life. Again. There’s no use of you being the strongest vessel if I have to put up with you being also the most annoying one.** “... Sorry.” 

Ben’s not _sorry_ , not really, and they both know it. Now he’s more vexed than anything. He looks up, at Leia and Poe who haven’t moved during the one-sided silent conversation and the obvious torture going on before their eyes. When Leia wants to come closer Ben stops her with a simple gesture of his hand. She stops with a frown.

“Do you need medical assistance?” 

“No, no no no,” Ben replies fast, with a wince. “I need--I need two minutes.” **And a Force-User to eat!** “Why can’t you need chocolate like any angry creature in this galaxy?” Ben huffs, half hurt half annoyed. He turns his attention on his symbiote as Leia goes towards the door, dragging Poe behind her. “Listen, Void, I understand your sense of urgency, I do. And I’m sorry I scared you--” **I wasn’t SCARED!** “Alright, I’m sorry I _angered_ you, but listen to me: As long as I don’t _have_ the Force we can’t leave.” **… Oh.** “Yes. So unless you have a secret stash of Force-food hidden somewhere in your invisible _pockets_ , we won’t last far in hyperspace. Bear with me, we are stuck here until I recover.” **I didn’t think about that.** “You don’t think about anything.” **Tell me, who almost got his head blown off just to flirt with a snack?** “... Alright, you think only about survival.” **One of us has to.**

Eventually the pain goes away. Void has calmed down. Ben gets up, dusts his clothes, and he simply goes right to the door. When he opens it, he’s greeted by two blasters that aim right at his head. He raises his hands with a frown. 

“I thought we were past this.” 

“We just wanted to be sure you’re _you_ ,” Leia replies, lowering her weapon. “What do you think you’re doing? You are still under arrest.” 

Ben sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Mother, if you could just--”

“ _Mother_??” Poe gasps, awaking from whatever reverie he was in. “What? But…”

Leia sighs. Ben wonders if right now is the time for this type of conversation.

“ _Yes_ , Captain, Ben is my son,” Leia says with impatience.

“But I-- That means I--” 

“ _Yes_ , _Captain_ , I’m the ‘bitch’.”

“I am _so sorry_ ,” Poe blurts out, still in shock.

“Can I go?” Ben asks. 

“No,” Leia says. Her tone won’t suffer a reply.

 “You are putting everyone at risk,” Ben snarls, ignoring Poe. 

“I am not asking you to stay for the heck of it, _Ben_. I am not even trying to put you behind bars, because we obviously can’t.” 

“Then _why_??”

Leia looks at him, then at Poe, then at him again.

“First of all, you’re grounded. Second thing… I may have work for you to do.” 


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Ben around, peace in the Resistance couldn't last long

**This is not a good idea, this is NOT a good idea.**

Ben raises his eyes to the sky. Void must have had repeated that at least ten times. Ben doesn’t see the problem. It’s like a mutual agreement. He gives the Resistance intel about the First Order, he can get out and have a driver to drop him on any planet he wants.  _ Any _ .  _ Planet _ . In the end they’re winning.  **What if mom’s lying? What if it’s a trap?** Now the only difficulty of this plan is to find on where planet to go.  **They’re plotting against us! We should kill them!** Should they attack directly the First Order? Wait? Ben feels like he has done the whole map of Void’s abilities. He knows of his weaknesses, the side effects of Void’s “attacks” on his body, also his strength and the length of power Void allows him to use. They also manage to share their strength and fight or act in tandem, which is good.  **… I’m bored. Let’s go hunt!** But is it enough to win against Snoke? And if they attack directly the First Order, how are they going to escape?  **You know what I crave right now? A T’doshok. I could eat a whole family.**

“Alright, that’s enough,” Ben says while slapping the table with the tablet he has in his hands. The thing doesn’t break thank the Force, but it makes Leia jumps on her seat.

“What?” She asks suddenly. “What’s happening?” 

“Nothing! Nothing is happening.” 

Ben tries to focus on the tablet again, but it’s not easy. For the moment Leia simply makes him go through all of the intel the Resistance has gathered, and check if this is right or wrong. Him having taken his datapad was a good thing, because he can’t possibly remember everything about the First Order. There’s also missing informations inside that were too important to put in the databank, but Ben can’t recall what...  **You didn’t know about the list. How can you be sure there’s things you know about the First Order?**

“Oh please, be quiet,” Ben replies, dropping his head between his hands. “I’m trying to get us out of here, isn’t that what you wanted?”  **I’m just saying.** “No, you’re not, you’re trying to get my attention! There, you have it! What is it?”  **Your mom is looking at you.** “... And whose fault is that??”

If Leia has the decency to say absolutely nothing about the whole situation, her stare speaks thousands words about her thoughts on Ben’s mental health. He can’t blame her. He’s wondering too. He puts the tablet on the table, gently this time, and he rubs his temples with his hands. Leia has left her own tablet as well. 

“Are you okay? You didn’t sleep last night, you look like hell.” 

“I don’t--I don’t sleep anymore. I had a question. Why did you keep it a secret? Who I am, why did you keep it a secret?”

Leia sighs. “I would have served me no good. It would have put my situation at risk just like me being Darth Vader’s daughter did. And you’re not even a  _ valuable _ hostage, you left the First Order and attacked them. At least in this situation, you’re not--you don’t need to worry about this for the moment.” 

**Is she kidding? The First Order would gladly trade a whole capital ship just to have us as prisoners!** Ben looks at his mother without saying a word, and he eventually bows his head a little. 

“Thank you.” 

“Don’t thank me, you’re not out of trouble yet.” 

They both get their tablets and resume their work, hoping to have finished before midday. And they manage to finish mapping their intel in record time, even despite Void’s boredom and Ben’s impatience. 

Ben is surprised they have been left alone all morning. He’s surprised he doesn’t have a bomb attached to the neck, surprised they let him shower and stay the night without tying him to a chair or whatever way they could have tried to restrain him. Him not having the Force seems to be an information they don’t have yet, and he’s glad it’s this way. It’s definitely better this way. But still. Poe have kept quiet about what he learnt, and no one asked him why he was in possession of intel useful to the Resistance. He didn’t introduce his former rank in the First Order, and they simply… went along without asking how he was having access to Officer-rank intel. No one asked him what could be the rank of a Force User in the First Order if not Knight of Ren. Maybe they have their doubts. But no one asked him. 

After having depleted all of Ben’s tablet’s intel, Leia eventually excuses him and he leaves the room as quickly as his dignity allows him. It’s not like he has a lot of places to go after that, the Resistance still sees him as a monster and he’s not really at ease in their surroundings. But he’d rather wander in the base than stay in the same room as Leia without having anything to do but talk. They never talked about what happened in the interrogation room, what has been said. Maybe because Leia doesn’t want to, because she wants to keep this sacred image of her brother. Maybe because Ben doesn’t want her to be put through this again. Without the Force, Ben doesn’t know what Leia is thinking, what she’s feeling, and she’s not the most readable person in the galaxy, so Ben is left frustrated and still wondering if his mother has some semblance of feelings for him other than pity and this sense of overprotectiveness she has for the entire galaxy. After a few glances at the barracks and the hangars where the Resistance keeps their starfighters, Ben leaves for the edge of the forest with a sigh, his backpack strapped on his shoulder.  **I’m hungry** , Voice suddenly says with a sheepish voice.

“Really? Already?” Ben groans. So they lasted a day and a half. Marvelous. “You said that this herd would satisfy your cravings for days, weeks.”  **I made a mistake. I was a little too optimistic** . “A little?” 

Void doesn’t answer anymore. Ben sits against a tree and looks at the base from afar. Hungry. Again. This is without an end. And if Ben delays it, then he’ll probably stay even longer without the Force, so longer on this planet, somewhere in space. Where are they, by the way?  **You’re asking me?**

“Of course not,” Ben angrily replies.  **I hope so. I don’t know where we are.** “That doesn’t surprise me.”  **Can we go hunt again?**

Before Ben can reply, the base starts ringing all the alarms and the sky gets black with the enemy’s starfighters. 

 

Ben runs back to the officer’s quarters as fast as he can, avoiding the shots and explosions of the TIE-fighters using only Void’s instincts. Leia is still safe and sound in the building but everything is shaking around them.

“An attack of the First Order? How??” 

“They obviously found you,” Ben dryly replies, guiding her by the arm to the hangar bay. 

“Are you sure about that?” Leia asks with an eyebrow raised as she follows his pace.

“Of course I’m-- They didn’t--” Ben closes his mouth with a  _ clac _ . 

Somewhere in this swarming army are his knights. They found him, and he led them straight to the Resistance. 

“Can you help us?” Leia asks, stopping in the hangar. The soldiers are running everywhere, jumping on their ships to join the battle in the air while everyone else is evacuating. “I’m not asking you to join us… But can you help the Resistance escape?” 

“I can’t,” Ben replies immediately, and a little too fast. 

Leia drags him out of the way as a droid rolls fast to a ship. “Please, we need y--” 

“I  _ can’t  _ I don’t HAVE THE FORCE!” Ben yells. “I’m absolutely not up for this, and I can’t leave this planet because the jump will kill me!” 

Leia looks at him with wide eyes. Ben tries not to look too scared, but he is. If he brought the First Order there, then all of his plans are in jeopardy. He can’t fight the First Order alone. He can’t kill Snoke if the First Order wins. 

“But I… I can try,” he eventually says. “Go to safety, I’ll take a starfighter and cover your escape.” 

“If you don’t have the Force then--” 

“I’m still a good pilot and a good shot. You leave this place and you take as many soldiers as you can with you. This place is doomed, this fight will  _ not  _ be a victory. You know it.” 

“I know it.” Leia looks at him for a moment. Again, so many questions, so many things she wants to say. But she’s Leia Organa. She has other matters to attend than emotions. Her eyes shine under the artificial lights of the hangar bay. “Be careful.” 

“I will try.”  **She should hurry, we don’t have a lot of time.** “You should hurry.” 

Leia nods and lowers her eyes. So this is another goodbye. Ben doesn’t know if this time this is the last. An officer comes right to them and stops at a reasonable distance, asking Leia the orders. And Leia becomes a general again as she barks orders and prepares the evacuation. She leaves with the officer and doesn’t turn back. 

Ben steals a starfighter and joins the battle. He looks for his knights, probably they will be in a shuttle or a superior class TIE. He just needs to find them before they decide to follow the Resistance’s mothership. Along with him in the sky are ten X-Wings and one bomber, and they’re keeping the firepower on them to make sure the TIEs are sparing the evacuation shuttles. Ben shoots down two enemy fighters and deviates another from rushing at the Resistance transport. The starfighter com connexion is beeping but Ben doesn’t turn it on, he doesn’t need to hear the other X-wings. With luck they will turn back and leave the planet. 

The dogfight goes on and on without an end, but it doesn’t matter as most of the Resistance soldiers has managed to escape to join the mothership hidden on the other side of the planet, and for the moment no main ship from the First Order has arrived. Maybe this was just the number of soldiers in the area who answered the knights’ call. But this shouldn’t be long and soon a star destroyer would be in the planet’s orbit; Ben has to move fast. Without the Force it’s more difficult to fight in a starfighter, and Ben is a little ashamed of how out of shape he is without the Force. He’s as strong as a normal human. How degrading.  **Stop throwing a self pity party and concentrate on the fight! Your knights are not far, I can feel them!**

“You can?”  **Yes! I can! I feel them, I feel! The Force is strong! Strong!**

Ben grits his teeth. If they decide to kill him… there’s not a lot he can do. But he looks for them anyway and doesn’t stop shooting at TIEs. And eventually he sees it. The Upsilon class shuttle, followed by two TIE Silencers, is among the remaining TIEs. Immediately the Silencers go after Ben’s starfighter, and Ben has no choice but to turn back and avoid the collision and, worst, the blasts. One hit and his shield will be destroyed. Ben flies low and spins to avoid the damages, unable to turn back to fight as long as he has them on his tail. So he makes them follow him far from the battlefield.  **Do they have shield? On their ship? Ours didn’t.**

“Yes, they have,” Ben replies between his teeth, spinning so fast between the shots he wants to throw up.  **Why ours didn’t?** “We stole a prototype! I’m BUSY, VOID!” 

The second Silencer cuts Ben’s road with a slick and stealthy boost and shoots. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHAH! Cliffhanger!


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> taken down by the Knights of Ren, Ben has no choice but resolve himself to try to do what he feared most in order to survive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> smol fight chapter with a lot of feels.  
> If I can call this like that...?  
> Enjoy!

Ben coughs and tries to open his eyes but the smoke around makes them water instantly. He can’t feel half of his face. He can’t feel his legs. He can’t hear Void. When he opens his mouth to talk, to call Void, he only gurgles blood and coughs again. Maybe it’s because of his head injury, because of the blood running down his face from his scalp. Maybe it’s because of the metal bar from his starfighter’s wing that pierces his abdomen and pins him to the ground. With both his hands, and ignoring his broken fingers, Ben grabs the bar and tries to take it out. It only bumps against his spine and sends a painful electric shock in all of his body. With a howl of pain Ben jerks his hands away from the bar. He breathes slowly. Air in and out. In. And. Out. He grabs the bar again. Pulls again, tries to avoid his spine and broken bones. He throws up blood. He stops once more, the pain is almost unbearable without the Force to draw power from it. He can’t reach it, can’t cope with it. He’s going to die _right there_ . He was supposed to be invincible, they were supposed to be invincible! And he’s going to die like a mere _human_ who’s been shot in a dogfight?! He can’t, he can’t die there, he was supposed to make Snoke pay, to kill him! 

Noises are heard near him. Ben’s not alone. He knows his knights are there. A shout, the voice of a woman, someone is coming closer.

“We were supposed to bring him back alive!” It’s Kali. There was a time when her voice was comforting. “You weren’t supposed to kill him!” 

“He betrayed, and betrayers deserve death,” a much calmer voice replies. The voice is distorted but even this way Ben can recognize it. Nerem. He would have taken the slightest chance at killing Ben to have the place as master of the Knights of Ren. Now seems like a good time. 

“He didn’t betray _us_!” Kali replies, still screaming. 

A part of the ship is pushed aside near Ben and he immediately grabs his blaster with his least broken hand, sucking air between his teeth to push back the agony. 

“He’s not dead.” Keran. Sando must not be far. “He’s alive.” 

“Good,” Nerem says with a too satisfied tone. “Let’s kill him, then.” 

For Ben’s utter joy, Keran doesn’t kill him. He raises his head and turns to Nerem. Then he looks down at Ben. “No. The orders are clear. Snoke wants him alive.” 

“He’s really alive??” 

Kali runs past Keran and kneels next to Ben to look at his injuries. She has gotten rid of her mask, from this close she looks so worried, he never saw her with such an expression on her face. Worry. She worries for him. He let them to Snoke but Snoke couldn’t turn her away from him. Kali inspects his wounds, ignoring Nerem not far from her. They’re all so close, he can taste the Force around. Kali gasps.

“Master, the Force! It’s--You…” 

“I… don’t have it,” Ben replies with difficulties. Just a little shortcut. She doesn’t need to know more. 

“See? Useless,” Nerem spits. “Kill him.” 

“You shut your whore mouth,” Kali snarls at him. “You’re not my boss, you never were!” She then turns again at Ben. “Kylo, did you betray the First Order?” 

Ben nods. Yes he did. And he’s going to destroy everyone.

“... Did you betray _us_?” She asks.

Ben shakes his head and hisses in pain. No, never. He would never betray them. They’re the closest he has of a family, the instruments of his vengeance against Luke. Soon they would be those against Snoke. 

Kali shakes her head. “Do you remember when it was just us six? When we needed nobody else but each other? Those were a good time. We could do whatever we wanted, and nobody could stop us. Nobody.” Yes, he remembers. Good times indeed. At the beginning of their service at the First Order, when Snoke hadn’t tightened the leash on them yet. Oh, to see this glory again… 

“Kali…” Ben faintly says. His vision is starting to get blurry, he doesn’t have much time.

“Yes, Master?” Kali says, leaning closer. 

“Do you… t-trust me? Are you still this l… this loyal knight of mine?” 

“Always,” she replies straight away.

“Kali,” Keran warns her, but she doesn’t listen. 

“Then I need your help,” Ben simply says. He drops his blaster and brushes her head tendrils with his valid hand.

“Whatever you need.” 

“Kali, don’t!” 

Ben suddenly grabs Kali’s tendrils with violence and pulls her to him, sinking his teeth in her neck so deep he almost decapitates her. He feels the Force flowing through him along with the blood of his knight and the oh so missed _crack_ of the cartilage between his teeth. Even before Kali dies of blood loss Ben has the Force again. He pushes everyone aside with a violent blast of Force, licking his face with Void’s tongue to taste the blood, his and Kali’s. 

“aaa **aaaa** ahah **aha** h! **Ye** s! **Yes** , i **t’** s b **ack**! T **h** e For **ce** , I **can** fee **l i** t a **gai** n!” Ben transforms his hand in black claws to rip the metal bar off of his body and he throws it away, getting up like he has nothing. In a few minutes he will be as good as new. He just needs to feel it again, the Force, the flesh. Kali is on the ground next to him, barely alive, maintaining herself only with the Force. Even with both her hands she can’t cover the wound entirely, and the blood is pouring out. Such a waste. 

“ **Tha** nk y **ou** , **my knight** ,” Ben says as he crouches near her. From his right eye is pouring Void’s black matter, slowly covering him. “ **Throu** gh th **e F** orce **you wil** l assi **st** th **e Destruction** of th **e F** ir **st** Or **der**.” He then grabs her head between his hands to suck at the Force she uses to keep herself alive until she’s depleted of life. He carefully puts her on the ground, tries not to decapitate her completely. She doesn’t deserve to be desecrated with disrespect. 

The sound of lightsabers igniting behind him warns Ben that the Knights have recovered from his attack. Nerem, Keran and Sando are surrounding him. **This will be an easy fight** , Void hisses in Ben’s brain. Ben starts morphing again, taking Void’s easiest appearance to prepare for the fight as the three knights get into position. Nerem makes the first step, stretching his arm towards Ben.

“What _are you_?” he asks, and his lightsaber hums in the air when he makes circles with it.

Ben doesn’t answer, instead he jumps right at him, shielding his forearms by transforming them as solid as he can to withstand the lightsaber’s blows. Nerem dodges the first attack, the second, and the third he has to block it with his lightsaber, not following the speed anymore. So Keran and Sando join the fight. Their tandem is fearsome. As Keran grabs Ben with the Force and violently pulls him away from Nerem, Sando braces himself and catches him mid-air with his weapon, cutting Ben’s arm just above his armor and severing it easily. Ben snarls in rage and changes again, this time he dodges Keran’s attack by taking back his human appearance, so the lightsaber goes well above his head. Growing his arm back, Ben pushes Sando and Keran with the Force. Three against one, this proves to be more difficult than he hoped. Again, he never saw his knights as weak, or he would have killed them with the rest of the school. He also never thought he would have to fight them either… Retransforming again to block Nerem’s attack, Ben catches him by the neck with his tongue but it gets cut by Sando. Stepping back again, Ben growls. **The next strike. The next strike must kill one of them. The rest will follow quickly.**

Keran and Sando attack again, in a perfect synchronisation. Charge, strike, defence, strike. Always connected, always together. If one falls, then… Ben lets himself be impaled by Keran’s lightsaber and drags him closer to him by the hand. When Keran tries to wiggle out of his grip by dropping his saber, Ben simply covers him in black goo to get him closer, and closer. 

“Keran!” Sando yells, and he jumps at Ben. Ben moves out of the way, dragging Keran away from Sando and Nerem. 

Keran tries to free himself with the Force, gritting his teeth behind his helmet while suffocating under the pressure. The more he struggles, the more Ben feeds on his life force from every pore. **Eat him! Eat him! Kill him!** Ben protects his face from one of Sando’s attacks by making a large shield grow out of his shoulder, and he steps back again, not wanting to let go of his knight. He doesn’t have a second to himself. So he shortens Keran’s suffering by ripping his heart out of his body with a powerful strike, eating it in one bite. Sando screams as he charges.

“KERAN!! NO!” 

Ben drops Keran’s body to brace for impact. A step aside, a sharp blade, and the clash between the lightsaber and Void. Ben’s weapon gets cut in half by the lightsaber but reforms inside Sando’s gard to rip his arm off, and Sando yells in pain as he turns his lightsaber off to jump away. Nerem takes advantage of this to attack too, but even if he catches Ben by surprise and cuts him with his own weapon, Ben simply brushes it off and heals himself. It only angers the knights more, and they double their efforts and attack. Sando doesn’t let go despite his arm missing, making up for his new lack of speed with a renewed energy. Ben gains once again Void’s complete and easiest appearance to block the attacks more efficiently. He doesn’t yield under the attacks, but he can’t find a weakness in their stance, as Nerem protects Sando from harm while attacking, and Sando gives everything in his offensives. 

Trying the same thing Void did against the herd of deers, Ben makes spikes appear on his body and controls them with the Force to make little seeker head missiles. **YES! Yes! Don’t aim for the head, we must keep them alive! We don’t aim for the head for the heart! Let’s Rip their legs, rip their arms!** Ben aims for the legs, for the arms. He avoids the attacks and manages to severe one of Sando’s legs, leaving him this time on the ground. Nerem then starts placing himself between Ben and the dying knight on each of his moves, protecting Sando from every strike. But with all the blood Sando’s losing… This is one of the good sides of a lightsaber. The instant cauterization. 

Nerem dodges one of Ben’s deadly claws and uses his speed to force him to change back into his human form to gain in flexibility. And once Ben humors him, Nerem strike right for the neck, ready to decapitate him. The lightsaber cuts through Ben’s shoulder and thorax, severing his right arm. Unable to breath for a moment, Ben absorbs the shock of the deadly blow… And grows his arm back with a wince. Nerem takes a few steps back.

“What…? No, you should be--You’re supposed to--” 

“Die?” Ben asks. Once again, he has nothing but a cut in his shirt, his skin underneath showing no sign of the injury. “I know, I know. This is unfair.” 

Taking advantage of his knight’s confusion and shock, Ben impales him on his regrown arm and drags him closer, crushing his internal organs in the process. He takes Nerem’s mask off of his face and looks as the knight gurgles blood. **Let me! Let me!**

“Don’t play with them,” Ben says, “They were family. Make it clean, please.”

Nerem grabs Ben’s wrist. “You’ll pay for t-this…” 

“Don’t worry, I know,” Ben soothes him.

And he lets Void take control, take down the two knights still alive in the battlefield. Just as it promised, Void kills them quickly. The feeling of depriving a _Force-User_ , a real one, of their life is exhilarating. It’s a thrill never discovered before, a new wide range of sensations he’ll never find anywhere else. Ben is afraid of liking this a little too much. Void is ecstatic, finally at full capacity and back at its place in Ben’s mind, it licks the Force in the air and devours the flesh of what was the First Order’s strongest assets. Two were missing from the fight and will still be in their way. But the hardest part is over. He killed Kali. He ate his most trusted warriors. The rest will follow quickly. Taking his human form once Void is done eating, Ben sits on the ground in the middle of the wreckage and starts sobbing uncontrollably. 

 **That had to happen** , Void says with a flat tone. **Human feelings, they always get in the way.** Ben angrily wipes his eyes, looks around to find the bodies. Nerem has been almost cut in half by the blow, Keran has his torso open and all his organs for the world to see. As for Sando… First his arm, then his leg, last his head. He’s not even recognizable. And Kali…

Ben will probably never forgive himself for Kali’s death. **She had to die. It was you or her.**

“I know,” Ben snarls. “It doesn’t make it any easier.” **You will mourn your minions later. We have to leave this planet.**

Ben gets up and grabs his backpack from the ruins of starfighter, then he searches for the knights’ shuttles. They can’t be that far. When he finds them, two Silencers and the Upsilon hastily landed in a small clearance, he quickly checks their state and chooses the Upsilon. He can navigate it alone and he’ll have more space if they have to stay longer in space. As he opens the shuttle, two Xwings fly above him and turn around to land near him. Ben waits. He doesn’t want to be shot down if they mistake him for an enemy. 

The Resistance soldiers jump out of their starships and Ben recognizes _Poe Dameron_ **Him! Again! Don’t you dare!** run to him. 

“You’re alive?!” Poe asks in disbelief. “You got--The First Order shuttles…?” 

“I’m taking the Upsilon,” Ben simply replies with a voice empty of emotions. “The owners are dead.” Saying this, he vaguely gestures at the forest. He won’t guide them to the corpses. 

After a glance thrown at the forest, Poe stares at Ben again. “They were… like you.” 

“By that, I assume you mean Force-Users at the First Order’s service. Yes. But it doesn’t matter. As I said, they’re dead.” 

“And you’re leaving.” 

Ben looks at the two soldiers without a word. The second one is a Twi’lek he barely saw in the base. The fear in her eyes tells him she knows him, however. **We don’t have time for them. With this much food we can withstand the jump.** Ben sighs. 

“I really have to go. With luck you won’t see me again. I’ll try not to be in your way.” 

Something flashes in Poe’s eyes, and strangely Ben still can’t understand what that means. Void is blocking the way.

“What should I tell the general?” Poe suddenly asks. 

“... Tell her I’m sorry. I’m going to make this right.” 

Poe gestures at his soldier to go back to the Xwings, says they’re leaving. Before jumping on his starfighter, he stops and looks at Ben again. 

“Good luck, Ben. Don’t make too much trouble.” 

Ben scoffs and waits for the Resistance to land off before he goes to the Upsilon. **We won’t be discreet**. Ben knows. But he doesn’t have much choice. Turning the engines on, Ben braces himself for the jump.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot express how happy I am to see that this fanfic is liked so much.  
> A special thanks to rusprince who was the first to post a comment on this fic (and never stopped after that), it meant so much to me I started posting again despite my situation not being ideal enough to stick to a fanfic. With that I realized that this might please people other than Thiamma and Blacknwhitewings who are *obliged* to read my fanfics because they're the ones *beta-reading them*. If you find any mistakes in my fanfics, please DM them, not me (a)  
> And all my thanks to everyone letting comments on that!  
> I'm rambling again!  
> See you next chapter!


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Free from the Knights of Ren, Ben goes to do the next best thing he has to: kill a bunch of soldiers of the First Order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a shameless fight scene. No plot whatsoever. ENJOY THE VIOLENCE!!

Void stays silent during the hyperspace travel. The shuttle is in autopilot mode while Ben has the head above a bucket as he tries to convince his body not to throw up. He’s not as sick as before, but he’d like to keep the strength he gained for later. For a useful time. He never felt so strong with the Force, and he wonders if this is normal. Void told him that his former vessels couldn’t even use the Force, or barely. So why does he feel stronger?

Since Void isn’t in a chatty mood, Ben knows he’ll have to wait, so instead he thinks of his plan to keep his mind occupied from the nausea. 

The Upsilon class shuttle is a magnificent source of Intel. First of all, he now officially knows he’s wanted, dead or alive, so there would be a _lot_ of Bounty Hunters on his tracks. And if he’s absolutely outraged by the price on his head, he tries not to think too much about it as he has more important matters to attend to. 

They have to take actions against the First Order. Not only they have stalled long enough, but also surely Snoke won’t let him kill the Knights of Ren so easily and without consequences. And Ben needs to act before Snoke finds a mean to stop them. They’re not fools. Snoke is not an easy target, far from it. And the longer he doesn’t know about Void, the better it is. So Ben must be careful about it… _him_ . His new friend. Though Void would be mortified to know _he_ has been anthropomorphized a little more again, Ben feels like it’s deserved. All those weeks spent together… Yes. They’re friends. They can be friends. 

Back to the plan.

Even if they must be as discreet as efficient _at least_ , they also need to act fast. Who knows how long it will take for the First Order to have their Starkiller function-- Ah, dammit! He forgot to talk to Leia about the Starkiller base! How could he forget? So he also has _this_ to take care of! Groaning, Ben leans forward and puts his head against the rim of the bucket. 

For the moment they’re headed for a small First Order outpost just at the border of the unknown regions. It doesn’t seem much but it’s a good place to start weakening the First Order, because it’s a waypoint between their scattered outposts in the galaxy and the massive resources they have in the Unknown regions. Ben intends on striking fast and leaving no one alive to tell what happened. With this outpost out of the way, the First Order will be obliged to reroute their supplies, losing time in the process. And if he can win Snoke’s attention and force him to leave his hideout to come to this galaxy, then he’ll have a massive advantage: less hyperspace.

Speaking of which. 

Eventually their ship arrives at destination. Finally. Ben sits on the pilot’s seat and gets out of hyperspace with relief. Immediately he sets the shuttle in furtive mode, to wait for his stomach to settle and for Void to regain strength. **Where are we?** he immediately asks. 

“Near a First Order outpost. I thought it would be good to move forward in our plans, now that we have killed more than half of the knights. We need to make the first move if we want to keep our advance.” **This is smart, I give you that.** “Thank you.” **What is your plan?** “We’re going to crash land on their radio tower to prevent them from calling the outside. Just before the crash, we’re going to jump and destroy all of their ships save for one that we’re just going to _pretend_ we’ve broken. Then we’re going to kill everyone. Last, we leave the planet.” **The landing will be painful**. 

Oh, he knows. He just doesn’t care. His only goal is for this outpost to be cut out from the world. The rest, he can handle. 

“Prepare for landing, Void. Let’s not waste anymore time.” 

The Upsilon shuttle enters the atmosphere without slowing down, causing it to instantly burst into flames. Ben grits his teeth, feeling the heat rise inside the cockpit. **Beware of the fire!** Void warns him. At first Ben dismisses the thought with a click of his tongue, too focused on the landing. But then the controls become heated because of the flames licking the outside of the shuttle with the friction of the atmosphere, and Ben has to let go with a pained hiss. From his hands escapes a thin thread of black smoke. Void has been hurt. **The** **_fire_ ** **!**

“Right, right, I’m sorry, I forgot,” Ben mumbles, still hurt because of the flames. He pulls on his sleeves to protect his skin. They still have to land. He aims for the radio tower and speeds up. Before the impact, he spots the hangar of the starfighters. He launches himself out of the Upsilon shuttle to fall on the hangar, protecting himself with Void’s matter to form a cannon ball around him. He feels when he breaks the hangar’s roof, grunts when he touches the ground with a loud bang, tearing through a starfighter in the process. The alarm starts blaring around them, making Ben’s head ring with the beginning of a headache. Absorbing the protection around him, he gets up and looks around. Stormtroopers are charging at them with their weapons drawn, and they immediately start shooting as soon as Ben has his shield down. Ben jumps behind a pile of crates to protect himself from the blasts and checks the spaceships around them. They all seem in good shape, fortunately none of them is ready to depart. Taking advantage of the troopers’ surprise, Ben hides his backpack near the starfighter he has chosen to escape with once the deed is done. No one will think about finding it here. Perfect.

Ben uses his lightsaber like a boomerang to strike down a trooper running too close to the spaceships for comfort, and he calls it back with the Force as the weapon makes a perfect half-circle in the air. **How many are they? On the planet?** He then jumps on the ships and cuts deep inside with his lightsaber, dodging the blasts from the troopers in the process. **I sense two hundred eighty-four humanoid living beings. Oh, well.** Gripping a metal plate from one of the dismantled carcasses of the starfighters, Ben uses Void’s strength to throw it at the soldiers below him, hitting two in the face. They fall on the ground with a dull sound and don’t get up. **Two hundred and eighty-two!** Ben jumps on another ship and lets the blasters of his enemies pierce holes in the windshield, rendering it unusable. He then uses the Force to crash another ship on the face of a group of troopers taking cover under it. **Two hundred and seventy-six!** Gritting his teeth, Ben transforms into Void’s easiest form once again to land safely in the middle of the troopers. Before they can grab their melee weapons, Ben has eaten the face of one and used the momentum to backflip on another, transforming his arms into blades to cut him in two. Both parts fall on a different side, making a stormtrooper scream in fear not far from Ben. Annoyed by the sound, Ben extends his arm to grab him and bring him back, smashing his helmet with his head. At last, the trooper has stopped screaming. **Two hundred and seventy-three!** Rolling into a ball, Ben covers himself in spikes and throws them around like blasts, touching all of the troopers surrounding him. They all fall and Ben wastes no time finishing them where they lay. Grabbing a blaster, he turns around and shoots at a trooper trying to reach the few remaining ships. The man dies with a shout. **Two hundred and sixty-four! Where’s the rest? Outside? Hidden?** Taking his human form again, Ben grabs his lightsaber to destroy the lasts of the ships. He’s almost done when he hears the tell-tale _clack_ of a rocket launcher being charged, and he spins around to find the author of the noise. **It’s going to hurt** , Void simply says as the rocket strikes the energy tank of the spaceship next to them, and Ben is swept away by the explosion. He goes through the wall with a loud _crack_ that sounds nothing good for his spine, and he tumbles in the dirt until he completely stops, wheezing and blinded by the sun. **That hurt** . Ben wheezes an insult at Void, waiting for his spine to crack back in place. Once it’s done he rolls on his side just in time to dodge a blast in the face. He gets up, realizes where the rest of the two hundred soldiers are. All outside, ready to kill him. **There they are! So much food in one place! Reminds me of the Resistance, such a nice pack of snacks all huddled in the same pl--**

“Can you _please_ shut up?? What is wrong with you?!” Ben shouts while using a trooper as a shield to block the blasts. Void doesn’t answer, he’s probably pouting, so Ben concentrates on the fight. He throws the now very dead trooper at the others, uses the distraction to jump right in the middle of the army. They’re less dangerous at close range, unable to shoot without touching their allies. Igniting his lightsaber, Ben decapitates the first trooper, then strikes another at the top of his helmet, forcing through the metal and melting it with the head of the trooper. He blocks an attack with the Force, redirects it so another enemy takes the punch in the face. Both troopers are rattled and Ben strikes both of them without delay. **Two hundred and fifty eight!** The stormtroopers split way and scatter around to put as much distance as they can from Ben, while some of them stay at close range to take their chances at hand-to-hand. Pretty thin, if someone asks Ben, but he lets them try. He uses the Force to push them away and mercilessly cuts them apart without breaking a sweat. **Two hundred and forty-nine!** It’s when the other troopers start shooting at him while he’s still fighting the close-ranged ones that it becomes complicated. Stretched between protecting himself from the blasts that could burn Void and taking down the last few of the troopers fighting against him in hand to hand, Ben barely has time to jump back from the melee by using a trooper as a springboard, folding his spine in the process. He can’t shake the shooting troopers off, though. Ben uses his lightsaber to stop every blast coming at him and transforms his hand in a giant scythe to cut the legs of two charging troopers. They fall on the ground with screams of pain that ring in Ben’s ears. Gritting his teeth, he cuts their heads off with his lightsaber to make them shut up. **Careful!** Ben raises his head at the warning. A blast is coming directly at his face and he’s not sure he’ll have time to stop it. Raising his hand in front of his face out of reflex, Ben pushes the blast with the Force… and the blast stays frozen in place a few feet away from him. Ben looks at this with wide eyes.

“Did you do that?” **No! You did!** “Did I do that?” 

The blast doesn’t move from its position, energy angrily crackling in the air. Not wanting to know how long it can last, Ben moves away from the blast’s trajectory and jumps at the frightened troopers. He uses the surprise to kill them all. **Two hundred and thirty! Round number!**

“You might want to find a faster way to kill them if we don’t want to spend the day here,” Ben says while slashing through the troopers. A sound echoes from one of the hangars and for a moment Ben fears one of the troopers found a working ship. But it’s a simple AT-ST. The two legs war machine runs to his direction, its cannons aiming at him and firing as soon as it’s close enough. **Want to try to freeze this one?**

“No,” Ben replies while jumping out of range and in the middle of the shooting troopers. 

But instead of stopping and _not_ shooting at its allies like Ben thought, the AT-ST sends a blast directly on the troopers to end Ben. He and Void are, once again, swept away by the explosion, and it’s Void who reaches the ground safely, his cape floating in the wind of the blast. 

“ **I like it. This is interesting.** ” He tastes the air. “ **Two hundred and seventeen!** ” _ARE YOU GOING TO COUNT EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM?_ “ **Yes! This is the point!** ” _GREAT_.

Void laughs as he jumps into the melee again, provoking screams of terror in the ranks of the troopers. Keeping an eye on the hangars, he bolts from one enemy to the other without stopping. This one he crushes between his claws and bends the helmet like a can. **Two hundred and sixteen!** That one, he slits his throat and jumps back as he dies in gurgles of blood. **Two hundred and ten!** Torn, shredded, ripped open, half eaten, they all fall on the ground in puddles of blood and gore. **Two hundred and two!** The ground is starting to get sticky, muddy as the dry soil drinks the fluids escaping the lifeless bodies. Ben takes over and throws his lightsaber at a sniping trooper so hard the thing plunges in the trooper’s eye socket like Excalibur itself. **Two hundred and one!** Ben calls the weapon back, extending his hand in the air to grab it mid-air. But as soon as his fingers close on the hilt of the weapon, cold air brushes his wrist. **AH!** Void starts laughing and Ben looks at where is supposed to be his hand. Where is it? Where is his lightsaber? Ben spins around and crushes the windpipe of a trooper with his elbow **TWO HUNDRED!** before jumping to safety on the AT-ST. He then looks at the stump at the end of his arm. Then at the troopers. Then at the stump. **At least** **_one_ ** **of them managed to aim.**

“You… do realize this is not funny, don’t you?” **Nah, this is fun. Your hand is somewhere in the melee. What are you going to do about it?** “I’m going to speed the countdown.” Ben replies angrily. 

Letting go of his control over his form, this time Ben changes in Void’s favorite form without batting an eyelid, letting the pain fuel his energy as well as his desire of vengeance. He changes both his hands in two gigantic spades and plunges them in the AT-ST and then jumps away before it explodes. The flames swallow the battle vehicle whole as it crashes on the ground and the troopers with explosions. **A hundred and… ninety! Strike!** The ranks of the troopers are thinned out and once again they scatter in the battlefield, but this time in less precise and coordinated movements. They simply flee the area and make as much distance as they can between themselves and Ben, slipping on the bloody mud and fumbling to try and run farther and farther. With a roar, Ben rips a part of the AT-ST to throw it at the fleeing troopers like a frisbee. That _smoothly_ beheads one of them. **A hundred and eighty-nine, I liked that a lot.** Truth is, Ben is also pretty proud of his throw. Calling his lightsaber to him, he jumps high in the air and glides until he reaches the next building, following the largest group of stormtroopers. He enters the simple ground floor storage area, not wanting his enemies to go and grab another rocket launcher. He lets a little MSE-E go on its merry way and cutting his path, and he thinks about the massive disadvantage of the First Order compared to the Empire. Random thought: They don’t use combat droids. They never did. Well, the Empire did it way, way less than the separatists, obviously, but they had a few. The First Order? Not one. **Not one that you know of. But, again, they didn’t think it was** **_that_ ** **important to inform you of everything.**

Ben grits their large teeth at Void’s remark. He jumps on a fleeing trooper and bashes his head against the wall, sending splitters of metal and bones and brain everywhere on the corridors. **A hundred and eighty-eight. You’re stalling.**

“ **Sh** ut **. The.** Krif **f. Up** ,” Ben replies to Void, bashing the soldier’s head with each syllable. “ **I m** ean **it**.” 

He drops the corpse and follows the muddy traces on the ground to where the troopers fled the battle. He almost killed a hundred soldiers, but that’s not enough. That’s not enough. Looking for the electrical rooms, Ben searches for a way to blow the whole place up and, doing that, to prevent the remaining soldiers to hide. If the whole building goes _KABOOM_ then it’s going to be easier. **Tired of the countdown? I liked it. If you do that it will be more difficult for me to count how many there’s left.** Ben doesn’t care. Void wanted to start the countdown, it’s his problem to finish it. Ben just wants to do maximal damage. With a hiss, Ben runs in the hallways, fast, cutting everyone in his path. Some soldiers try to stop him but he’s too fast for them. **A hundred and eighty-seven, a hundred and eighty-six, a hundred and eighty-four, a hundred and eighty-three…** Before he can reach his destination, Ben is forced to make a skid on the slipping hallway and hide in a corner. And then the entire corridor is lighted up with flames. Flametroopers. **...Uh.** Ben quickly calculates their chances of getting fried. They’re high. Really high. It looks like him hiding gives hope to the troopers, and they exchange the news over the radio, that the monster is afraid of fire. Ben is deeply outraged. Okay first, they’re not _afraid_ of the fire, alright? He just doesn’t like being burnt alive. Second, a _monster_ ? Getting up from his crouching position, Ben closes their eyes and feels the flametroopers. They’re coming closer, their pace slowed by the weight of the flamethrowers. They’re three, which is not ideal in such a narrow place, so they’re spread out in the length of the hallway. So if he doesn’t want to back up, Ben will have a hard time avoiding them. **What now?** Void is getting impatient, but Ben can _feel_ his wariness at the idea of fighting fire. Even if Ben manages to make a shield around them, the extreme heat will weaken Void. And weaken Ben in the process. Quickly, Ben recovers his human appearance, moves the fingers of his new hand, and he unscrews the cover of a vent to use it as a weapon. He makes it levitate above him for a while, testing its weight and balance, and he throws it at the angle of his hiding place. The cover scrapes the wall with a screech and goes flying right at the first flametrooper, cutting him in half at the centre of his torso. The two other troopers start unleashing the flames on the corridors, but so far they only manage to create an even more dangerous weapon as the cover passes through the flames and begins to heat. Now it’s sharp, dangerous, fast, and _on fire._ With a smirk, Ben sends his deadly frisbee against the gas bottle of the flamethrower, and the trooper goes flying in different directions, torn apart by the explosion. His friend was fortunately too close, and he’s swept away too. **A hundred and eighty. More than a hundred troopers have died this morning. I like it.**

Ben steps on the mingled corpses of the troopers and goes to find the power room. He doesn’t have much time, now that they know one of his weaknesses. Eventually he finds the door of the power room, and he bashes it open with Void’s strength. It’s darker than in the hallways, but Void has little care for the dark. Ben looks for the main power of the station, going slowly between the shelves of beeping lights and small buttons, and eventually he finds what he’s looking for. 

The station is nuclear powered. The cooling engines are surrounding the small container, and inside is one of the most powerful batteries the First Order has made so far. It’s almost a shame to destroy it. Almost. 

“Alright, Void, be ready, because we won’t have a lot of time to make it out of here once I destroy this. It’s going to be a massive explosion.” **Do we have to leave really really far?** “It’s unlikely we’ll manage to be out of range with so little time.” **Is it going to destroy everything? Even the ships?** “...Yes. Even the ships.” **Do you have a back-up plan?** “You know me. We’ll manage.” 

Void doesn’t replies to that. Truth is, even Ben is a little unsure of this one. Maybe the explosion will be mainly underground, maybe it’s going to swipe away everything. And they don’t have time to leave. Nonetheless this is worth it, because nobody is going to survive that. Void and himself, they can manage. The others… Without thinking too much about it, as he always does, Ben grows claws and slashes the main coolers, and he messes with the buttons to overpower the nuclear core. Closing his eyes, Ben looks for the control rods inside of the nuclear core to destroy them and allow the fission to be uncontrolled. Alarms start blaring around them as the temperature goes high and the stability drops to almost zero. It’s going to explode in minutes. Maybe… less? Ben doesn’t wait to see. He jumps out of the room and starts running. **Did** **_you_ ** **think this through, though?** Void critically asks. Ben would rather not answer that. He needs a place to hide, and fast, before the surcharge and lack of control rods makes the whole building, kriff, the whole base explode. If it doesn’t happen, Ben will be really disappointed. But if it happens… Ben pushes open the first door he sees, ignoring the soldiers running for their lives not far from him, and he looks at where he is. **This is the food supplies. Great. A lot of things we can’t eat for our last seconds on this plane of existence.** Ignoring Void, Ben looks around frantically and finds what he’s looking for. He unplugs the freezer, empties it completely and hides inside, closing the door and maintaining it closed with the Force. **What.** Everything starts shaking around them but Ben stubbornly stays in his freezer. **What are you doing?? Do you really think that’s going to work! That’s not! ...We’re dead.** The explosion is heard from inside the freezer, and they go flying in the air for a moment before heavily crashing on the ground. 

Everything stops moving. 

Ben opens the door of the freezer with a kick and rolls out with a heave, shaken and sick but alive. Void immediately covers them with black matter to protect them from the nuclear fall. There is nothing left around them. Only ruins of what hasn’t been vaporized, and a heavy cloud of dust that hangs in the air. It’s… silent. Everything is silent, and Ben sits on the ground to enjoy the sudden peace. He didn’t think about that. Looking for explosives to destroy the base. His dumb-ass plans are always half conceived, he thinks. **Just like this one. Everyone is dead. Yey. How are we going to leave?**  

Ben shrugs. “We will find a plan.” **A half-thought one?** “Shut up. I don’t see _you_ making plans that work.” **Mine always work! Remember how I got you out of Resistance cell?** “Almost killed me.” **And the time I carried you in the desert of Caamas?** “Almost made me killed.” **… When I freed you from Snoke?** “Almost made me killed, too! Besides it wasn’t your intention, you didn’t do it on purpose.” Ben sighs. “Can’t you enjoy the peace around?” **I lost the count.**

Ben raises his eyes and looks at the rumble, feels the Force around them. “Zero,” he simply says. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeeeey! Okay, back to the plot!


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After having destroyed the outpost, Ben takes a few steps back and think about the pros and cons of attacking Snoke, and the means at his disposal for doing so. He just... does it his own way, and it's not the most efficient one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the problem with impulsive people. At first it sounds good, then it doesn't look good anymore.

The wait for another functional ship to arrive is unbearably long, Ben realises as he stays hidden in the ruins of the outpost, making himself almost invisible with the Force. Void’s complaint is also a constant reminder that he needs to think his plans more. But at least his backpack is okay, protected by the remains of what was supposed to be his way out. Eventually, after four days of hiding in a nuclear wasteland, they see a ship coming. It’s a light cargo transport, probably filled with supplies and soldiers. They must not be more than twenty inside, which is good, and he may be able to hide without being seen.  **Where to?** Void asks as they both look at the ship landing next to the ruins. Ben doesn’t know yet. He just wants out. 

As soon as the ship has landed, soldiers gets out of it and start searching the rubbles, whether for clues or for survivors. Foolish hopes. Ben hides in the shadows and quickly enters the ship before the doors can be closed, and he hides with the cargo boxes. Nobody suspected a thing, mainly because nobody thought something could survive the blast. Eventually the soldiers come back, and Ben listens to their reports. Nothing has survived. The blast came from the main building, probably the power generator. When asked how could it be possible for a nuclear reactor to become a nuclear bomb, they couldn’t answer. Nonetheless the place is beyond help, and they need a new outpost. Ben is proud of himself. Now for the main question.

Where to?

Ben doesn’t feel like turning the galaxy upside down to find the Resistance. He doesn’t think he can withstand the travel to fight Snoke as long as he’s hiding in another galaxy either. His thoughts are going from a hiding place to another, and he thinks about his little cabin in the trees, far on the other side of the galaxy. Against all odds, he misses the quietness of this life, the peace of mind and the sunrises far far away from everyone. And Void does too. Safe from the awful lack of sentient food to eat, Void actually enjoyed this peace before the storm. But it’s new for him, to see the galaxy just like that. Like a place to look at, a place to enjoy rather than to  _ eat _ . Hidden amongst the boxes, on enemy ground, about to enter hyperspace, Ben can feel Void confusion and his anxiousness about these thoughts, unaware he’s sharing them with Ben. Maybe it’s been too long since they have been two separate entities, now. When they enter hyperspace, this time Void recoils back a little, and Ben can keep his head straight and his mind sharp, even just a little more than usual. It’s enough for Ben to know that Void trusts him. Not completely. But… just enough for the moment. 

Ben decides he has to work on that.

 

The travel in hyperspace isn’t as long as Ben thought, still he wants to throw up when they stop moving and enter the orbit of another planet. They must be far away enough. Quickly, Ben gets out of his hiding place and jumps from a trooper to another, killing them instantly and as fast as he can. Which is fast. They don’t have time to draw their weapons, and killing twenty soldiers is a piece of cake when one has killed a hundred in less than an hour. He takes the control of the ship and, bracing himself, goes back to hyperspace to leave the planet’s orbit before anyone can do anything. He chooses a remote system far from First Order ground, and waits to arrive at destination with a little bit of dread in his mind. He hopes the travel is short enough for him to get out of there unscathed. But this plan, this plan he thought about. Even if Void doesn’t agree.  **I think getting lost in a remote system while waiting for Snoke to arrive in this system is the dumbest plan you ever had since I know you. But the idea of making explode our only way out on the outpost is good second, if you want my honest opinion. Thinking about it, I have the impression that your plans are getting worse every time you think of one.**

“Shut up, Void, I don’t see you getting us out of trouble.”  **I want to eat Snoke.** “Okay, and how do we do that?”  **We’re going to find him, kill everyone! Kill them! And then we EAT!** “And then?” 

Void doesn’t answer. Either the hyperspace doesn’t do any good for his speech, or he’s afraid to say something. Ben was expecting something along  _ and then we eat the galaxy _ , but it never comes. Ben wonders if Void has changed his mind.

Eventually they arrive at destination: above a dwarf planet Ben chose not for his ideal position nor his tactic advantage over the First Order. No. He chose it for its massive amount of beaches, its large forests made of gigantic trees, and its numerous types of lifeforms that would be able to sustain Void for a while. This planet… it’s useless. It’s  _ perfect _ . Ben types other coordinates on the control panel, places one of the troopers’ blasters on the commands, just enough in balance for it to push the button to the hyperspace if an unfortunate wind would happen to knock it down. Grabbing a beacon, a radio and a solar powered battery, Ben rushes to the sole evacuation pod on the ship. He enters it, pushes the blaster with the Force, and throws the pod in the direction of the planet. The ship disappears in the starry sky as Ben enters the Planet’s atmosphere with speed. They crash in the sand with a lot of bumps, and Ben opens the pod quickly to breathe in some air. He’s done it. He’s managed to get them out of everyone’s reach. And with this, he thinks as he looks at the beacon, he doesn’t need to go after Snoke.

Ben takes his backpack and jumps out of the pod, and grimaces as he sinks a little in the white sand. He kicks off his boots and walks towards the sea, then sits on the ground and looks at the waves sliding in the sand and shyly recoiling away, then doing it again. And again.  **What now?** Ben sighs.

“Now we work on the hyperspace thing. And another thing…”  **You want me to** **_what_ ** **? I don’t want to.**

Ben leans back and puts his elbows on the ground. The place is nice, and the sun is just warm enough. “Well, if you want to read my mind just so we don’t talk about it, might as well read why I think we need to work on your poor self-control when it comes to food.”  **When I’m hungry I eat. End of the conversation. I’m hungry, I eat.** “Humans eat when they’re hungry, and they eat when they’re bored, and when they’re frustrated. And I think-- No, I  _ know  _ you act exactly like that too.” 

Void doesn’t reply to that. But Ben means it, he just wants Void to realize that. Void isn’t hungry because he truly needs food. He’s hungry because he’s used to be hungry all the time. He eats because it’s his main goal. But maybe,  _ maybe _ , they can find something else to occupy Void, and that way he wouldn’t always think about food. And if he doesn’t think about food he doesn’t need to convince himself he needs to eat.  **But what if I’m really hungry?** Ben shakes his head. 

“You’ll work on your impulse control.”  **Why??** “Because if not, then it’s a bigger threat than hyperspace.” 

Ignoring Void’s swears, Ben gets up and goes away from the beach. He needs to make a shelter if he intends on staying on this planet. With his lightsaber he makes a quick work of the surrounding trees so he can clear up some space, and he starts the creation of yet another little wood house. Void stays in his corner of Ben’s mind, probably pouting instead of thinking about what Ben said, but Ben isn’t too worried about that. It’s not like Void has a lot of choices. It’s either that, or their plans of actions will always be cut short by Void’s urges to destroy everything. And if they manage to kill Snoke, then what? It’s with his mind full of Void’s questions that he spends his first night on his paradisiac hide-out, listening to the sounds of the night. 

Ben gets out a little before sunrise to go meditate at the edge of the forest. The night has actually been fruitful, and Ben feels ready to try on some experimentations with his renewed amount of Force.  **Like what?**

“Do you remember on the Resistance base? When I told you we couldn’t leave unless you had a secret stash of Force hidden somewhere?”  **Yes?** “We’re going to do just that. We’re going to find a way to reroute the flows of Force, the strands of life into a bubble.”  **You want to play with life itself? No very Jedi-y of you.** “Since  _ when  _ am I a Jedi?” Ben replied with an annoyed tone.  **Fair enough.**

Ben closes his eyes and starts concentrating on the Force around them, coursing through everything on the planet including himself. For once Void leaves him alone as he settles deeper into trance, his mind entirely concentrated on the Force. He can see them. The strands of Force Void can see and feed on. He can see through his eyelids the rays of light that link every living being in the galaxy. He starts working on them, tries to understand them so he can control them. But each of his attempts are sold by failure. Eventually Ben opens his eyes with a frustrated growl and squints at the sun high in the sky.

“Damn it,” he says with anger.  **Thought you could succeed on the first try? Good luck with that.**

Ben gets up from his seating position, his knees cracking from having stayed in the same position for too long, and he goes closer to the ocean. Stopping a few centimeters away from the water, he catches a fish with the Force and brings it back to him. If the thing is surprised to have been pulled out of the water so fast, it doesn’t have time to reflect on it as Ben angrily bites its head off, much to Void’s happiness.

“See??” Ben says after having spat out a fish bone. “Frustration!”  **Hunger!** “You’re not  _ listening _ !”  **And you’re eating a fish!** Ben sits right where he is, not caring if he ends up wet because of the waves. If he can  _ absorb  _ the Force, then why can’t he reroute it?  **The Force calls back the Force. As long as there’s a way for the Force to take its rightful place back, then it’s going to do it. It’s just like… you know… what some snacks call the laws of the universe? Or the idea that nothing is lost and everything is reused and nothing is created out of nothing? Well it’s because the Force always finds its way back. Eventually. You mortals don’t control the Force. You don’t use it. You simply borrow it for a certain amount of time.**

Ben raises his head, as to look at Void even if he can’t. “Then what does it become when you eat it?There was nothing left in the cave where I found you.”  **Food. It becomes food. When you eat a steak, the animal has disappeared. It won’t reappear at the exact same spot it was before. And you can’t bring it back. But you borrowed what it was.** “... That makes no sense,” Ben admits.  **Because you don’t use your brain.**

Ben sighs. It was so simple in his head. “I’m not going to give up. And you still have to work on your impulse control when it comes to food.” Void hisses. “I don’t care,” Ben replies with a sharp tone. “If you want us to be efficient, then it’s your ultimate homework.” 

Saying this, Ben gets up, hisses when he sees how drenched he is, and he goes back to finish his wood house to pass time. He remembers what Luke told him about the Jedi that had trained him. Obi-Wan and… whatsisname? Yoda. How Luke had found stupid their propension to go in exile while the rest of the Rebellion was fighting against the Empire. And eventually, with the destruction of the school, Luke has done the same, he just… disappeared from the surface of the galaxy and went to hide somewhere no one knows about. And Ben has mocked him for that. 

And where did that lead him?

**AH! HIDDEN ON A REMOTE PLANET!**

Ben winces, both at Void’s scream in his head and the harsh realisation that it  _ may  _ be a thing, to go away from everyone, for the Jedi. Well, at least he can try and make the most of his sort of exile. And if Void is actually compliant with the plan, they might not stay here for too long. 

  
  


As it turns out, Vois is  _ not  _ compliant by nature, and taming the Force by sheer obstinacy is not very efficient. But after weeks of stubborn head bashing against the laws of Nature itself, Ben has eventually stopped trying so hard. One step at a time, he works with Void on the symbiote’s constant cravings, and they both find an interesting hobby in studying the living things on the planet and their connection to the Force. As time passes, Ben learns about all of the coral reefs and hidden caves around the island, about the way Void sees the Force differently between land-things and water-things, finds how to differentiate the strands of Force depending on what it’s connected to. It’s also a challenge, to be awake twenty four hour a standard day, because  _ yes _ , after five months on the same island on the same planet, Ben can see why Void is always hungry. But he fights it and stays stubborn on his plans, they will occupy their time differently. And they do. And after ten months, Void’s hunger has dimmed and his curiosity for the mortal world has expanded. He finds the colored fish pretty and the lights of the stars above mesmerizing as he tries to finds patterns in them and invent new constellations he could be king of. He gives names to the animals living around their wood house, even if its always related to food (because he will eat them eventually. He always eats them). But they’re still stuck on the island with no idea how to harness the Force and keep it. So they paint the house, and take notes about the animals and their relationship with the Force, about the plants and the rocks, about time and space and everything that goes to their head. They paint a goat-like life form and call it Andy and give it food and don’t eat it, and they braid a collar for it and make it surf. It doesn’t help with the plan to stop Snoke. But, Force damn it, it helps with the frustration of not finding anything and not being able to sleep. It helps with the boredom. 

On the Seventeenth month, Ben wants to kill himself.

He has no idea how the Jedi could spend so much time in exile, away from everything, and not  _ die  _ of boredom and frustration. Did they spend all of their time  _ sleeping _ ? What were they doing, in their swamps or their deserts? Lying on the sand, his eyes focused on the sky, Ben stays deaf to Void’s attempts to cheer him up. He offers that they can re-paint the house, or go wrestle with a giant shark bare-handed, but Ben doesn’t feel like it. So he stays motionless under the sun, not caring if he get sunburned or not. Next to him, Andy is oblivious to his utmost existential crisis, grazing on a pathetic and feeble bush that managed to grow through the sand at a terrible price. Ben’s mind wanders toward the idea that this goat is peculiarly stupid, feeding on such a low energetic substance while there’s the grass just a few meters further, that would be more efficient to feed Andy--

Ben gets up so fast he almost headbutts Andy. 

“It’s not about the Force,” he exclaims, “it’s about what we do with it! Where it comes from!” 

Andy hops farther from him with little jumps.

**… What? What are you talking about? The Force is the Force.**

“Not for us,” Ben explains while sitting on a proper position. “While it’s possible for humans to feed only on salad and pastries, because technically it’s edible, it’s also not really efficient because it’s not  _ adapted _ . We treat it differently. We also saw that the Force was acting differently depending on the thing it was in. Fish do not react the same way as tookas. We always saw this simply as  _ it tastes different _ . What if it also acts different?”  **So… Some living snacks would be salad and other would be pastries?** “Well, yes....?”  

Ben gets up and grabs a stick, and he makes two circles in the sand. “So, two things. The first one is the type of ‘energy’ used. The second one is the way we use it. The best example is the Knights of Ren. Right?”  **Okay?** “Obviously they would be the most efficient because they’re Force-users. Not only have they the best amount of Force, they also have the most  _ adapted _ , because, well, your  _ host _ is made of this same energy, and lives off of the same energy. And for the second part, a fraction of this Force we didn’t use it as fuel, but as pure Force, and I think that is why I felt stronger despite you. Because, at this moment, where the need to survive was stronger than the need to eat, we knew how to use the Force at our disposal. And since it was  _ usable _ , it was easier for us to do so. If we had at our disposal only mere Force-blinds, the effects would not have been the same. It would have dimmed the hunger and healed the injuries, yes, but it wouldn’t have given us the strength to fight the Knights of Ren. Does that makes sense?” 

Void stays silent for a moment, processing Ben’s train of thoughts. Eventually he talks.  **So some sources of Force we immediately burn for energy, and others we could… not eat them? Or eat them but slower?**

“Not quite,” Ben answers. “Others we can actually work with without burning it in the process. The ones we are trying to work with are either mine, and I can’t separate myself to create a bubble, or the one  _ around  _ us directly and the strands are too thin and volatile to work with. Not adapted, because we are of a different type of life.” 

**So you want to do like we did with Kali? Absorb it without eating it?**

“And we have to find the right moment to enclose it. Now it’s almost impossible to trap the Force. It’s intangible, it’s almost on another plane. It doesn’t care for matter. Except one.”  **Mine** .

While Void is quickly grasping on the concept of Ben’s plan, he doesn’t seem as thrilled as Ben is. Ben frowns.

“What’s happening?”  **I can’t keep the Force in.** “... Why not?”  **I am going to eat it. This is what I do. I eat the Force.**

Ben sits down again, this time with a heavy sigh. “You don’t mean it.”  **I do! It’s what I do! If I don’t eat the Force I don’t survive! I will die!** “Of course not. How long did you stay in that box without food? Decades?  _ Centuries _ ? You  _ can  _ survive. It’s just… Not ideal. Also you don’t automatically absorb the Force around you like an unstoppable vacuum cleaner, it’s a deliberate choice. Listen, I can’t keep the Force  _ for you _ . It won’t work. You have to do it.”  **…** “Can we try?”  **Alright. Let’s try with a goat.**

Ben turns to Andy with a grimace, and Andy stares back at him with its mouth full of grass. Nope, he’s going to find another goat. Getting up again, Ben goes for the edge of the forest where he knows he’s going to find what he needs for the experiment. He finds one that is suitable, calls it to him, and freezes it on the spot. He raises his hand, ready to absorb the life forc-- **WAIT! Wait, wait, how do I** **_not eat_ ** **the Force? What do I do with it?**

Ben lets his hand drop with a groan and frees the goat. “You simply keep it, how is that too hard?”  **I never did it before! How do you do things you never do usually?** Ben thinks about it. “I picture it, I guess.”  **Picture it?** “Yes, I imagine what it will look like based on what parameters I have of the situation. Think of it this way : you don’t have the Force, so you need a host with the Force to survive. You need the Force to survive. So…” This is more difficult than Ben thought. “Think of yourself inside a tiny host inside yourself inside a host. You don’t eat your host right away, right? Well, do like this.” 

**Myself inside a tiny host inside myself inside a host. This is mind blowing, did we eat a poisoned fish before you decided to get desperate on the beach?**

Ben loses patience. “ _ Try,  _ at least!” He demands with irritation. 

Void complies with a mumble and several grumbles, and they catch a goat again to absorb its life-force. After a few minutes, Ben feels absolutely nothing new. 

“Well?” He asks Void. 

**This didn’t work. Your idea is stupid, I ate the goat. That couldn’t work.**

“Thought you could succeed on the first try? Good luck with that,” Ben retorts, words echoing Void’s on their first day on the island. Void hisses. That doesn’t stop Ben from catching another goat.

 

After several fails on several types of animals, and days listening to Void complaining about the plan, eventually the first ‘success’ arrives. Ben feels the foreign bubble of Force squirm as Void coils around it. It’s absolutely disgusting. Nonetheless it doesn’t last long as Void struggles to keep it inside and around himself long enough, but Ben is proud of them. With this, they don’t need to fear the hyperspace, nor the exhausting battles at hand. With this they can finally fight Snoke. Stop him, stop the First Order and the Star Kil-- DAMMIT he forgot the Starkiller base! What if half the galaxy is already destroyed??  **How could you forget a giant killing planet??** Void exclaims as if he hasn’t forgotten as well. Cursing through his teeth, Ben packs his backpack and grabs the First Order beacon he has carefully kept for all those months. He plants it on the ground at the edge of the forest, where the base sinks easily in the sand, and he lights it on. The light starts blinking on the side, sending a signal to every First Order ship in range. And now, they wait. 

Two days after, while Void trains on keeping his pocket of food, a ship arrives in the planet’s orbit. Ben cuts the rope holding Andy and lets it got toward the sand, all painted and colored and being an amazing distraction for the guards when they arrive.

“You be good, Andy, okay? And eat well, you’re a disgrace, to eat feeble bushes instead of nutritious food.” Ben pats Andy’s head and hides in the shadows. When the ship comes to a stop on the sandbank, not far from the pod’s crash landing, the stormtroopers open the ramp and start immediately patrolling around the crash landing. The pod has been scavenged up to the frame by now, but still they inspect it. One of the soldiers stops in front of Andy, who’s not at all impressed by the weapon nor the armor.

“... That’s a painted goat,” he says from under his helmet. “Hey, SP-4956, look at that!”

“Damn,” the second trooper comments, coming closer. “That’s a nice goat. You think we can--” 

“Don’t even think about it,” the first trooper sighs.

By the time they stop staring at Andy and go towards the forest for further inspection, Ben is already inside the ship, hidden and ready to strike.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was some weird science time...  
> okay they're out! Back to Snoke we go!


End file.
